Special Appellate Panel: Fonts

By Chris Mincher, John Grimm, and Joe Dudek

Three weeks ago, the Maryland Supreme Court dropped a brief-writing bombshell by announcing that, for the first time in 26 years, it is revising the list of approved fonts. The change was prompted by this letter from Joe Dudek, but also follows multiple instances of font commentary here on the Maryland Appellate Blog: Chris Mincher took a walk through the Court’s typography requirements, including fonts, way back in 2014, and former Blog editor John Grimm offered his take on the Court’s font choices more recently in 2020.

To mark this milestone, we’ve invited Joe (specially assigned) and John (recalled) to join Chris for a special edition of our “Appellate Panel” digital roundtable discussions.

Chris Mincher: I admit, this was huge news to me. I somehow missed the memo this was happening, and, as a bit of a font enthusiast, was dismayed to have missed the opportunity to make my opinions loudly and obnoxiously known to the Court. But that sort of leads to a separate issue — should there have been more opportunity for the bar to weigh in? I’m not aware that there was any sort of formal public forum for this, the way there would have been for proposed change to the Rules.

Speaking of Rules changes, it occurs to me how far we’ve come on fonts. It was only 9 days after my Blog post in 2014 that the Rules Committee thought it would be best to mandate Times New Roman as the only acceptable font. I (here) and others (here) protested, and the proposal failed — but, nonetheless, it demonstrates a remarkable shift at the highest court in less than a decade.

As for the new list itself, I generally approve of the choices, with a few caveats. I don’t know why Book Antiqua got the axe; it’s a font that is both elegant and unpretentious, which also gives it versatility in all kinds of formal writing. I would understand if they ditched Book Antiqua and kept Palatino fonts — Book Antiqua’s pretty much a knock-off of Palatino anyway — but to lose both?

I was also surprised and a little amused to see that Bookman Old Style somehow made the cut. I gave that font a bit of a rough treatment back in 2014 and stand by my mockery of it, but I’m not the only one who finds the use of Bookman Old Style to be a curious choice: Back in 2021 after Donald Trump’s lawyers unveiled their responsive briefs in his impeachment trial, the astute commentators of the Advisory Opinions podcast noticed the filings’ deployment of Bookman Old Style and joined in my derision of it (discussion beginning around the 33-minute mark). So, I guess my takeaway here is that the Maryland Supreme Court and Donald Trump’s lawyers have at least one thing in common: They both disagree with my font preferences.

Joe, John, what are your hot takes on this list? Which of your favorites were ignored? Did the Court’s revisions still get it wrong? Should the process have been a little more inclusive?

John Grimm: I would say it’s only a bombshell if you haven’t been paying attention to the world of appellate fonts—which, admittedly, there is no reason to do if you are a sane and balanced person.

I agree with you that the list shows how far the profession has come in even ten or twelve years in accepting some typographical adventurousness.  I think the real star is the ascendant Century Schoolbook. A decade ago, I would have found it out of place in anything but a U.S. Supreme Court brief, but it is becoming a real standard for appellate briefing, and I have even seen a few trial court documents written in it. I am also pleased to see the court finally putting Courier out to pasture.

On the serif side, I don’t really have any regrets. I think there are some nice Caslon fonts that could work well in a brief, but their absence isn’t really a big deal. And while I love Garamond for novels, I agree it is not well suited to legal briefs—its characters are too small and delicate, and its italics are migraine-inducing. In any event, the D.C. Circuit sealed Garamond’s fate when it banned it from its briefs a few years ago, and I think the Md. Supreme Court is on the right side of history here.

On the sans-serif side, I do wish they had considered ditching Helvetica. Maybe that is too much, too fast, but I find the font unsuitable for long passages of text—seriously, do you really want to read an entire page of the Panasonic logo? Helvetica’s bold lines and sharp corners are great for corporate logos or New York Subway signage, but they make my eyes hurt and my brain switch off. On the other hand, a sans-serif font that I think is curiously absent is Calibri. As the default font for Microsoft Outlook, I think most of us have gotten used to reading legal analysis in this font, and I think it is far superior to Helvetica—just open a legal analysis someone emailed you and change the font and you’ll see what I mean.

Joe Dudek: These are great points! On public input: I’m not especially confident that public input would have been helpful. After all, my letter mostly proposed three new fonts, and the Court accepted none of them.

And I largely agree about the fonts themselves. I basically think that Garamond italics should be illegal, and here, they are. I liked that the Court focused on adding readable fonts—Georgia for electronic documents and Lexend or Arial Nova for big, clear sans-serif letters. But I think the continued inclusion of Times New Roman was not about readability; it was about ubiquity. Appellate briefs aren’t newspapers, so they shouldn’t use newspaper typefaces. But because so many people default to Times (including all Attorney General civil briefs), the Court would have made waves removing it from the list.

To Chris’s point about the inclusion of Bookman: I think this is a good topic for more discussion, especially if the Court now plans to maintain this list more actively than once every 26 years. The upside of Bookman is right there in the name: It’s for books. These large x-height typefaces are favored by professional typographers in published works, so they should at least be considered by attorneys and courts. That discussion remains my best path toward expanding the list to include some great, professionally designed fonts.

Still, I think the big takeaway is less about fonts and more about judges. They’re reading briefs electronically, on screens and devices; they’re not carting around your printed briefs. So every typesetting choice should be made with that in mind. The reader might not be able to see your footnotes if the footnote drops from the top of the page to the bottom, for example. And block quotes that are either too large or break across pages will be difficult to read and process. That leaves lots of room for attorneys to ensure that their writing is accessible and digestible, even beyond font choice.

Maybe a fun thought experiment: If you had to pick one of each, which font would you use, which would you strike from the list, and which would you add? For me, I think I’d take the hint about Georgia and principally use it in briefs. I’d probably strike Times New Roman (yeah, yeah …). And I’d probably add the readily accessible Palatino (that I’m typing this in).

John Grimm: I’m a bit of a Times New Roman apologist—it’s not pretty, but it is safe. It’s like the font equivalent of a dark gray suit and red tie: perhaps boring, but never inappropriate. I think Century Schoolbook will remain my standard for appellate briefs, although because of you, I do now have Georgia on my mind.

Chris Mincher: John, an interesting angle about Courier — does this mean the Rules Committee is going to finally upgrade the look of its reports? One wonders how much longer it can hold the line on that one. I’m also going to echo you here in wishing Helvetica had been shown a quiet exit from the list. It’s a fascinating font (my 2014 post highlighted this enjoyable documentary about it) but it just can’t shake its associations, and I would not want an appellate brief to have the same look and feel as an American Apparel catalogue.

I also generally share your view that Times New Roman is a pretty inoffensive choice; my issue is that Times New Roman is rarely a choice at all — it’s just what people do when they don’t care to think about the other options out there.

Joe, you’ve really nailed the overall theme here. Typography has always been intertwined with technology but, for whatever reason, when technology evolves (and it constantly does), it takes a very long time for typography to catch up. Though the Court’s list finally jettisons the last vestiges of typewriters (Courier), it still retains the customs of print media (Times New Roman) even though that format is clearly on the way out. 

I remember as a clerk physically hauling multiple boxes of briefs and petitions around; maybe that is still happening, but it seems more likely with MDEC filing that many judges would find the electronic versions more convenient. Then the question becomes how people are accessing things electronically — on a big monitor on a desk? On a tablet? Scrolling through on a phone? Or on a… I don’t know… watch? Sure, the last one seems improbable, but who knows in this world anymore. I think all three of us would agree that attorneys should take all that into account in putting together their documents. Practically, written text should be both substantively sound and relatively effortless to consume.

Now to the fun questions. From this list (now that Book Antiqua has gone the way of Pluto) my font of choice is likely to be Georgia as well. I’m going with the original instead of Georgia Pro, simply because Georgia is a little bit bigger, which is preferable for readability on smaller screens and maybe also as a little extra help for readers with imperfect eyesight. (On that note, I understand the history of Lexend as a font to maximize readability for those with difficulties, but compare it to the others around it on the Court’s list — why does it seem so small?) Helvetica is relegated back to the design fashions of 50 years ago where it belongs. And if this isn’t obvious, I’d want Book Antiqua to be reconsidered. Pluto can remain designated as an oversized rock, though.

Joe Dudek: Don’t forget: The reason Courier and Courier New and a few other typefaces left the list is because they never should have been there in the first place! This is a list of available proportional-width fonts. A totally different rule lets you use whatever fixed-width font you want. Speaking of the Rules Committee, it should repeal Rule 8‑112(b) or allow fixed-width fonts only when papers are prepared on typewriters.

Chris Mincher: I mean, I assume the Rules Committee isn’t drafting their reports on a typewriter, but I guess I can’t say that for certain.

Joe Dudek: Ha! If they are, then I’m impressed by all the underlining and strikethrough work for each rule revision. But seriously, it’s good to see things getting easier to read, and maybe a little more fun to write. Lawyers and judges are busy people with lots to do, so I’m always excited to make the reading bit even a little more efficient. And thanks to both of you for taking the time to chat about this! It’s mostly been a somewhat lonely, nerdy hill to die on.