Set in Style

Here’s how the heading for this client alert (a PDF file) appears on a computer that doesn’t have a particular font installed:

Whoever produced the alert (probably) imagined that the heading would appear like this:

Here’s how some of the body for the alert appears on that computer:

Whoever produced the alert (probably) imagined that the body would appear like this:

What went wrong? Whoever produced the alert made a common mistake. He figured that if the alert looked good on his computer, it would look good on all computers.

How to avoid such a mistake? Simple. Just embed required fonts when you create the PDF version of an alert. How? Here’s how.

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If your firm claims a commitment to excellence in all it does, don’t blow it by publishing alerts that are so far from excellent. That makes it seem as if your firm’s staff doesn’t know how to use common computer applications; they don’t pay close attention to detail; they don’t take pride in their work; and it makes the attorneys who authored the alert seem careless — as if they don’t bother to look at published versions of their work.

Only rarely do I find a law firm with professional-looking publications — I mean publications that appear as if they were designed and produced by pros.

Take a look at this newsletter published by Weil Gotschal. Take a good look at the page layout and the type. It may not be the slickest design in the world, but it’s solid.

The body copy is set in Stone Serif, and the heads are set in Helvetica. (I would have chosen Stone Sans for the heads to better complement the body.) Italics are used appropriately, and none of the type is underlined. Hyphenation is used to break lines (almost unheard of among law firms), so word spacing is very consistent.

And — to top if off — the newsletter (a PDF document) contains links that actually work! That’s a very rare occurrence in law firm publishing.

Unfortunately not all of the links are set correctly. For instance, if you click an attorney’s e-mail address, nothing happens. Nothing at all*.

And the newsletter contains an extra-special bonus feature — it’s written for a broad audience and it’s well written.

I give it a B⁺.

Now, compare the newsletter to this Weil Briefing. Take a look at the last two pages of the briefing. And try the links on the last page.

This one gets a C ^–.

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What should happen when an attorney’s e-mail address is clicked? For the sake of readers — including potential clients — and Weil’s attorneys, clicking an attorney’s e-mail address should open a new e-mail message with an appropriate subject line. This saves readers a bit of work, and — when one of Weil’s attorneys gets an e-mail with that subject line — he already knows what it’s about. E-mails with that subject line might be routed to a particular attorney for initial review.

Note: Any firm can claim (as many do) that it makes good use of modern technology. But when it fails to demonstrate that, the claim rings hollow.

You’re a lawyer and you want to write about the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Act”) or the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), so you define some abbreviations up front. That way, when you write, “The SEC is investigating so-and-so for some violation of the Act,” people know exactly what you mean (without doing more reading than necessary).

(more…)

A bit over a year ago, I was reviewing this piece about diversity at Wilson Sonsini’s Web site. What struck me was the reference to women “who belong to a racial, ethnic, or gender minority group.”

I wondered: “What is a gender minority group and who are women who belong to such groups? Hermaphrodites? Androgynes? Genderqueers?”

I couldn’t be sure (either what they were or why Wilson Sonsini was putting the spotlight on them), so I asked some of the good people at the firm, and guess what? Not one of them could (or would) say.

Well, by golly! I think I’ve figured it out. They’re fuzzy women, like Page Maillard.

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OK. Where did I get that picture of Ms. Maillard? I got it from this newsletter published by the firm. Take a look at it. It’s chock full of pictures of fuzzy women.

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Honestly, I don’t know what a gender minority group is or why Wilson Sonsini is so interested in their members or so reluctant to say who or what they are.

But I know this: 1) whoever produced that newsletter did a lousy job (and probably doesn’t know the difference between GIF and TIFF), and 2) the firm doesn’t seem to care (else it would hire someone who understands print production and cares about quality).

I just reviewed this client alert that (not which) was published by Winston & Strawn. It has some good qualities, and some not-so-good qualities.

What struck me first about this alert was the typography. While most firms make the mistake of setting body copy in a sans-serif face, Winston & Strawn’s alerts have a much more professional appearance: heads are set in a sans-serif face, and the body copy is set in a serif face.

The second thing that struck me was the complete lack of hyphenation to justify the copy. (For some reason, law firms just don’t like to justify copy the way the professional publishers do.)

The third thing that struck me was the verbiage at the bottom of the alert. To obtain the alert, I simply clicked a link at the firm’s Web site. So it seemed very odd that the verbiage offered me a way to stop receiving alerts from the firm.

Right above that verbiage was this curious comment:*

If you would like to review your contact information, please click here.

I clicked the link, and the following appeared:

We’re sorry, but something seems to have gone wrong:

The contact and event information could not be decoded.

If you got to this page by clicking on a link in an email, then the link information in the email may have been split across two lines.You may be able to copy the link from the email and paste it into your browser.

OK. The firm thinks it e-mailed the alert to me. So I did this simple test. I clicked the firm’s logotype at the top of the alert, and guess what? Nothing happened! (Had this alert been produced by pros, the logotype would link to the firm’s Web site.)

I went back to the firm’s Publications page and clicked the PDF icon for the alert, and guess what? The PDF version of the alert is an HTML file!

Just for the heck of it, I chose to view the PDF version of another alert**, and guess what? No links at all! Not even to the firm’s Web site.

Winston & Strawn’s a firm with some chutzpah: it claims it’s one of “the most technologically advanced law firms in the world.” It’s alerts say otherwise.
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* After reading this post, the good folks at Winston & Strawn got rid of that curious comment, and all the weird things that followed it. Good for them.

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** In a tribute to the days before the IBM Selectric became so popular, that alert uses underlines, rather than italics,for emphasis.

So they don’t write stuff like this:

The government has also increased its emphasis on charging individuals with FCPA violations, including seven so far this year.

or like this:

As you may have already heard or read, a Durable Power of Attorney (DPA) is a very important and beneficial document to have available, not only as you age, but at other times as well.

or this:

In short what the amendment provides if a user can not find the work’s creator and they tweak the work they have cart blanc to use an artist’s work without any fees being paid even when the creating artist identifies themselves they do not even have to stop infringing.

This white paper discusses a method for “editing a legal document collaboratively.”

In English, as in Law, there are accepted ways of doing things. If you deal in both subjects (English and Law), you should find out what those accepted ways are, and then adhere to them (unless you have one heck of a good reason for deviating from them).

Consider the following intro to this client alert:

Six federal agencies have jointly issued final rules imposing identity theft-related requirements on financial institutions, creditors, credit and debit card issuers, and users of consumer credit reports (the “Rules”).

What’s out of kilter is the hyphen in identity theft-related requirements (as well as the placement of (the “Rules”) and the lack of hyphens in credit- and debit-card issuers).

How should the phrase identity theft-related requirements be set? One good way to answer that question is to see what a reference like the Chicago Manual of Style has to say about it.

Here’s what it says:

A phrasal adjective (also called a compound modifier) is a phrase that functions as a unit to modify a noun. A phrasal adjective follows these basic rules: (1) Generally, if it is placed before a noun, you should hyphenate the phrase to avoid misdirecting the reader {dog-eat-dog competition}. . . . (6) If a phrasal adjective becomes awkward, the sentence should probably be recast.

The production editor of this alert (if you publish alerts, you do run them by a production editor before they’re published, right?) shouldn’t have missed this one at all, especially since the alert makes repeated reference to an “Identity Theft Prevention Program.”

What he or she should have done is follow the Manual’s advice to recast the sentence, perhaps like so:

Six federal agencies jointly issued final rules (the “Rules”) imposing requirements on financial institutions, creditors, credit- and debit-card issuers, and users of consumer credit reports to identify possible instances of identity theft.

Do you trust Word (the word processing application)? Couldn’t it be wrong about the spelling of a word? Couldn’t it make a grammatical error?

The following appeared while Word was checking grammar:

That’s one bulleted point in a list that begins with the following:

An editor can help you avoid:

Recently, I’ve had a number of conversations about typography, and typesetting legal documents. Some (e.g., Kenneth Adams and Si Daniels) dispute the idea that serif type should always be used for body copy because it is more legible than san serif type.

The United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, has sided with the traditionalists by adopting this comprehensive set of rules for typesetting briefs.

According to the court:

Studies have shown that long passages of serif type are easier to read and comprehend than long passages of sans-serif type. The rule accordingly limits the principal sections of submissions to serif type, although sans-serif type may be used in headings and captions. This is the same approach magazines, newspapers, and commercial printers take. Look at a professionally printed brief; you will find sans-serif type confined to captions, if it is used at all.

The Supreme Court of West Virginia goes in a completely different direction with these rules:

Except by leave of Court, all pleadings and briefs, including footnotes, must be in at least 14 point type, must use Courier, Arial, or Verdana font, and only one side of the paper may be used.

Go figure!