The good news is that adapting your website to ADA compliance can be achieved with minimal cost and little impact on the overall design and usability of the website. It`s about using the right text and textual features to ensure optimal accessibility. While this is a good start for the body part (like the one you`re reading here), titles should include larger text, while some text can be smaller (between 12px and 14px). When writing legal documents, what works for one document may not work for another. After Covid-19, customers have become familiar with online reading and tend to read documents on their mobile phones. It states that it is important to improve and optimize legal documents to make them readable on any device. Sometimes the courts also set rules for the best fonts to use in legal documents or on law firm websites. Keeping in mind all the considerations and best practices, this article highlights the best legal fonts and their sizes for legal documents. Contrast: There should be proper color contrast between background and text. The idea is to reduce the challenges associated with visual impairments such as color blindness. Read the WCAG 2.0 guidelines as they clearly indicate the contrast levels required for all text sizes. While this is an often overlooked aspect of legal document creation and law firm branding, legal fonts are important. While the best choice of legal font varies depending on your law firm and how your legal document or content is published and read, you need to make sure that your audience can easily read, understand, and retain the information in your legal documents.
You also need to effectively communicate your content to your audience in a way that accurately reflects your law firm`s brand. Not to mention, your policy complies with the rules of the Supreme Court in your jurisdiction. This way, your legal document can better engage your audience and enhance your law firm`s brand. See how Westlaw Edge takes your legal research to the next level In a legal environment, a clear and legible font is essential. And while there`s no official list of allowed fonts, some are used most often. As the standard font for legal documents, Times New Roman (along with Arial and Helvetica) is one of the most commonly used fonts. While there`s nothing inherently wrong with these fonts, their use signals a lack of choice — in other words, apathy. As Harvard-educated lawyer and typographer Matthew Butterick writes in Typography for Lawyers, “Times New Roman is not a choice of typeface, but the absence of a choice of font, just as the darkness of deep space is not color.” In short, choose a different font to show your legal clients and readers that you care about your legal writing. You know how to write legal documents, but you probably didn`t learn the principles of design in law school. Times New Roman with font size 12 is the default font used for legal documents. Other fonts such as Arial and Helvetica are also commonly used as legal fonts.
Whenever Times New Roman is used for a text, book, or document, it means apathy, which means there is a lack of choice. Therefore, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the Times New Roman font. This font is slightly narrower compared to other texts, as it was primarily designed for newspapers. Lawyers usually continue to use it because they know it. However, if there are other alternatives to choose from, it is recommended to stop using Times New Roman. Think about your favorite brands and the products you use regularly. If all the content on your website, labels, and marketing materials were in a standard font like Times New Roman or Arial, how would your brand perception change? There is a good chance that the brand will become much more boring and less appealing. Similarly, you should use legal fonts that reflect your law firm`s brand in your legal documents. Ideally, you already have law firm policies that you can work with based on your firm`s brand. But in general, when writing briefs, contracts, memos, etc., you should use a clean font that looks professional, easy to read, and fits your brand.
Ultimately, the only requirement is that your legal document is legible. Good typography reinforces the goals of the text (as you may remember from good typography). Lawyers are lawyers, so when I give typographical advice, I take care not to take a position on the appropriateness of certain habits. For example, as a consumer, I don`t like getting a 6-point acre credit card deal. But if I were a lawyer for the credit card company, my job would be to promote my client`s interests, including typography. So, is this good typography? In context, yes. Learn how to apply the principles of legal marketing to grow your business, attract more customers, and increase your sales. Optimize your legal documents so they are readable on any screen (and in person). This makes judges, lawyers, and potential clients care about their experience and goes a long way toward building your client-centric law firm. The best fonts for lawyers in legal documents are clean, professional, and accurately represent your firm`s brand. They should also be easy to read for your audience, so think about how they will read your legal document. While there is no uniform font for legal documents, you can use the following fonts to begin your search for the best font for your firm`s legal documents.
Using the text correctly can help you avoid such small but important accessibility issues. You may want to familiarize yourself with WCAG 2.0, specifically the following three factors: There is no default font size for legal documents. However, the minimum font size for legal documents should be 12, and keeping font size 14 makes a big difference in readability on monitors. It is also important to maintain sufficient line spacing between paragraphs to make them easy to read, even with long documents. I thought it was common knowledge that lawyers should avoid using Times New Roman as a font for their legal documents. But I had a conversation with an experienced lawyer about choosing the police in calls, and this experienced lawyer tried to tell me that the police didn`t matter. “Leave it to Times New Roman,” the veteran lawyer said. “That`s what judges are used to; That is what they expect. There is no reason to shake it.
And that may be true. Perhaps, after seeing thousands of court records, judges simply get used to it and “expect” these pleadings to look a certain way. It`s somewhat surprising that most website owners are sued for ignoring some trivial issues with text accessibility, such as font, alt text descriptions, image tags, and others that can be easily fixed. For example, did you know that you can be sued for the wrong font size? The opposite rule applies: enlarge the text. For websites, I recommend continuous text between 15 and 25 pixels. Larger font sizes are more comfortable on the screen because we read the screens from further away (see Considerations for reading the screen). All users should be able to easily decrease or increase the text size with an accessible cursor. The font size itself should make it easier to display text effectively on all devices, including phones, desktops, tablets, and specialized devices such as screen readers. First, read Bryan Garner`s vehement endorsement of a book by Matthew Butterick called Typography for Lawyers. Then read what Butterick says about the use of Times New Roman in legal documents: Learn more about font licensing and legal use of fonts.
You could spend your entire legal career without thinking about policies. But now you know why you should at least care about your writing choice. Admittedly, there is no official minimum size imposed by the ADA for use on the site. However, it is generally recommended to use a font of at least 16px for continuous text. When it comes to court decisions on legal document policies, it`s always good to see which font is recommended by the court in that jurisdiction. To give an example, the U.S. Supreme Court requires lawyers to use “Century Family” fonts for all briefs, while the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit suggests that attorneys should not use Times New Roman.
The Virginia Supreme Court also issued a list of acceptable fonts for briefs and other documents. The Florida Supreme Court also issued new appeal rules for policies to be used by lawyers. These rules require lawyers to use Arial or Bookman Old Style with font size 14 to check readability on monitors. The font size allowed for GTC is 12 points. For conditions to be admissible in court, they must be reasonably legible. The Court`s case law suggests that the minimum font size considered reasonably legible is 12 points. As mentioned earlier, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to legal documents. Some jurisdictions have specific rules, while others only require your documents to be legible. As with the font, there is no default font size for legal documents.
Color: Your choice of text color is also paramount. In particular, you should refrain from using text colors to communicate meaning. If you want to use different text colors to provide meaningful information, make sure you use other options to do so. This is especially important for highlighted text. Including text descriptions in images and subtitles in videos and animations allows visually impaired users to understand what is being shown. Whether it`s navigation buttons, charts, maps, or diagrams, be sure to add these important alt texts.
