Set in Style

Let’s say you’re an associate, and have been for five or six years. In the past few years, you’ve been so impressive that the head of the employment law practice group wants you to make a presentation at an upcoming seminar. This is a great opportunity. Instead of working in the office, you’ll be on stage.

Your presentation is on the differences between an independent contractor and an employee, and you have to prepare an article about that for the seminar handbook.

You prepare a draft of the article, and here’s a line from the section that discusses how the IRS determines whether a worker is an employee or a contractor:

Such a relationship exists when the person or persons for whom the services are performed have the right to control and direct the individual who performs the services, not only as to the result to be accomplished by the work, but also as to the details and means by which that result is accomplished.

You review the draft and that line seems just fine to you. As far as you’re concerned, it doesn’t need to be changed.

But it does.
(more…)

That’s our perpetual question. Here’s another answer to it.

Consider the following copy — the intro to an article titled “Letters of Credit May Not Last as Long as Expected” posted at the Banking & Finance Law Report blog:

Parties to a letter of credit following the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Golden West Refining v. SunTrust Bank, 538 F.3d 1233 (9th Cir. 2008) may be surprised to learn some letters of credit are not necessarily “perpetual.”

Had a skilled and experienced editor touched it, it might have become this:

Following the Ninth Circuit’s opinion in Golden West Refining v. SunTrust Bank, 538 F.3d 1233 (9th Cir. 2008), not all “perpetual” letters of credit are truly perpetual.

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If writing can be considered thinking on paper (even if it can’t), then an attorney doesn’t want to show others he’s a careless writer.

Careless writing is a warning to potential clients.

Appearances can be so important.

Attorneys (many of them) realize this, and so they tend to their personal appearance before important meetings (e.g., the first meeting with a very attractive, potential client).

But when it comes to what they commit to writing, the vast majority of attorneys (and their firms) don’t consider appearances at all. Not one bit.

They set everything in 12-pt Arial, justified, and not hyphenated (except documents submitted to the court, which won’t even accept documents set in 12-pt Arial). What most attorneys commit to writing has the same level of appearance as the attorney who shows up for an important meeting wearing shorts and sandals and a baseball cap.*

And this can put them at a distinct competitive disadvantage.

Consider responses to an important RFP. Let’s say an attractive client has sent the RFP to a half-dozen firms. Five of the responses look bland (and are set in 12-pt Arial, justified but not hyphenated). They’re all printed on letter-size paper. The only color they use isn’t a color at all, and they contain no graphics. They might say different things, but the first impression anyone gets from looking at them is this — they’re all the same.

The same, that is, except for the proposal that was designed by a designer and produced by a pro. That’s the proposal that stands out; it’s the one that gets the most attention (at least initially). It’s the one that has an edge.

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I’m not alone in my thinking on this. Consider what Peter Darling (a highly regarded business-development consultant who’s worked on more proposals “than I care to remember”) had to say in his recent newsletter (“How to Prepare a Proposal — March 2009”) about preparing proposals:

Someone reading a proposal basically has two concerns. The first is, “Can/will they do what they say they can/will?” The second is, of course, “How much will it cost?” A great deal of this isn’t a logical conclusion, but the result of fast, intuitive evaluation. Or, to put it in English, someone reading your proposal will form a powerful impression of you, your company and your offering just based on how the damn thing looks. That’s what designers do.

A good designer can make a proposal look polished, expert and contemporary. They can make your company and your offering look expert, elegant and desirable. They can work wonders. They really can.

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If you’re preparing an important proposal, don’t put all your effort into its content. Put a fair share into its appearance. If you want a leg up on competitors, be sure your proposal is Set in Style.

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Note: In Silicon Valley, lawyers sometimes do show up for important meetings in such casual dress. For this post, assume a meeting in New York, or D.C.

I don’t know how this happened (though I know Microsoft facilitated it), but — so far as I can tell — the most common way to set type for law firm seminar materials is to use 12-pt Arial for body copy.

That’s a mistake because Arial isn’t for body copy; it’s for headings.

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The other day, I got an e-mail inviting me to a seminar hosted by a well known law firm that — you guessed it — uses 12-pt Arial for the body copy of its seminar materials.

Here’s a portion of the invite:

That portion of the invite is set in Arial (a mistake) and the lines are set too close together (another mistake). The result is that it’s not so easy to read. Readers quickly tire of copy set like this.

Let’s see what we can do to make things better. First, let’s put some space (leading) between the lines:

That’s an improvement (it’s much less of a strain to read) but it still falls short. The copy needs to be set in a different typeface, one designed for use in body copy:

Compare that to the original (above).

Which would you say is easier to read? Which looks more  professional? Which makes the best impression?

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Now, let’s consider the copy. Parts of it are fuzzy (a random increase in violence?), and the whole thing is wordy.

Here’s what a skilled and experienced editor might do with it:

Note: the additional copy is adapted from the firm’s invite.

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Compare the revised version to the original.

That’s the sort of improvement you can expect from a skilled and experienced editor.

Gary P. Rodrigues, a lawyer and publishing consultant, authored this article (“The full stop in legal citation – has its time finally come?”) about whether legal citations should be modernized (e.g., whether a citation should be set as “LRC 1985 c 1 (5th Supp)” rather than “L.R.C. 1985, c. 1 (5th Supp.)”).

What I found of particular interest was the author’s comments about the role of editors:

In print, editors review every citation in a manuscript to ensure that all of the elements are present and that every date, letter, bracket, comma or period is in its proper place. While this work appears to be of comparatively little importance to the average reader, it in fact plays a critical role in transforming mere words on a page into an authoritative (or at least “authoritative looking”) statement of the law.

Confidence in the substance of a piece of writing can be undermined by poor presentation. In my early days in legal publishing, I observed manuscripts that superficially appeared to be of inferior quality being transformed by editors into publications of importance when the distractions caused by poor grammar and incomplete references to sources were eliminated.

Editorial standards serve the same purpose in the online environment as they do in the print world, i.e they enhance the authority of the document and the credibility of its author. 

Indeed, poor presentation can make all the difference in the world, and law firms should keep that in mind in all their publishing efforts — not just when they produce legal matter, but client alerts, seminar materials, Web sites, and the like.

If you wouldn’t send an attorney to court wearing Dockers, then — for much the same reason — you wouldn’t publish a client alert he wrote with the copy set in Arial, justified, but not hyphenated.

That would be a rather poor presentation.

It’s been said (mostly by me) that “the power of the press used to belong to those who had one. Now that everyone’s got a press (a computer attached to the Internet) the power of the press belongs to those who know how to use it well.”

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If an attorney submits a petition for a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court (or just about any document to any court in any legal proceeding) and sets it the way many large firms set their client alerts, the court won’t even accept it, and with right good reason.

By and large, courts won’t accept documents that aren’t set a certain way. They certainly won’t accept something that’s set like this (an excerpt from a client alert published by a large law firm):

And why won’t courts accept documents set like this?

Because they’re such a pain in the eye! That’s why.

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Professional typesetters are much concerned with quality of appearance and with legibility — how easy it is for readers to read what typesetters have set.

And why are typesetters so concerned with legibility? Because it has such impact on how pleased readers are with what they’re reading.

Very legible type is easy to read; other styles of type (e.g., the excerpt shown above) aren’t so easy to read. Give readers a whole bunch of hard-to-read type to read, and they become irritated. Not only that, but they find a good bit harder to understand what they’re reading.

That’s right!

And that’s important.

If the reason a high-priced attorney spends his time writing a client alert (rather than doing billable work) is because the alert can attract potential clients, then the alert shouldn’t simply be informative. It should be attractive and easy to read. It certainly shouldn’t give a reader a headache.

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Take another look at the excerpt above. In particular, look at the second line, and the next to last line; note how tight those lines are. There isn’t enough space between the words, and that puts a real strain on readers (which is so counterproductive if the goal is to convert them to clients).

Take a look at the right side of the type. Notice anything missing? If you’re an attorney, probably not. But if you’re a typesetter what’s missing is so obvious — hyphens! The copy is justified, but it’s not hyphenated. 

Go grab a newspaper or a book. Find a block of justified type, examine the right side of it, and you’re sure to find some hyphens. 

Why? 

So there’s consistent spacing between words.

Here’s that same block of type — justified and hyphenated:

Hyphenation goes a long way towards improving the word spacing, but there’s something else wrong with this block of type. Once again, if you’re an attorney, you’re not likely to see it. If you’re a typesetter, you’re sure to.

The problem is this: the block of type is set in Arial, a sans-serif face that was designed for headlines, not for copy*.

Here’s how the block of type looks when it’s set in Century, the face that the Supreme Court requires briefs to be set in:

That’s it!

Add some serifs and some hyphens, tend to little details like word spacing, and the client alert becomes much more legible, and it looks more professional.

I say, what’s set in style is more likely to be read and recommended than what’s not.

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* Go to a bookstore or a newsstand and browse the offerings from professional publishers. Note that none of them has body copy set in Arial. There’s a good reason for that.