Common Errors in Law Firm Publishing (#5)
It’s one thing to be home alone. You don’t have to comb your hair or shave. You don’t have to get dressed. You can respond directly to an itch. Not so when you’re out in public, where people are watching.
Ditto, it should be, for what you publish and for how you present yourself in type. Whether it’s an amicus brief, or a memo, or an article for a law journal or your firm’s newseltter, if your name is attached to it, it should look good. It should look like it was set in style.
So quit setting your final copy with Microsoft Word.
Word is a tool to help you write your copy. It’s a word processor, and it’s good at what it does, but it’s not a tool to help you set type or layout a page. It’s not designed for that.
Go to a bookstore and look at some new release. Look at how the type is set. Chances are very good that it looks like it was set by a pro. The spaces between words are very uniform. They’re not too short in one line and too long in the next. They’re very even, and that’s very good.
Now look at a brief or a memo or a pleading or a law review article or just about anything published by a law firm. Chances are good that the type doesn’t look nearly as good as it does in the book at the bookstore.
The reason? In most cases, Microsoft Word.
Look at just about any law firm publication. Notice the right-hand side of a column of copy. You don’t see any hyphens at the end of the lines, do you? Look again at the book in the bookstore. You do see hyphens at the end of a few lines, and that’s a key reason why it looks so much more professional.
If you care about your work’s appearance, don’t use Word to set final copy. Use a professional program like InDesign, or QuarkXPress, or Framemaker. That’s what the pros use, and so should you.
Comb your hair, polish your shoes, and make your work look sharp. After all, people are watching.
