Plain Language

Getting Normal:The Move to Letter-Size Paper

Almost three years ago, the Michigan E.L.F (Eliminate Legal-Size Files) Commission was formedby persons from business and government to promote the use of standard 8 by 11-inch paper. Thecommission, chaired by Patrick Clark, is part of a national effort supported by the Association ofRecords Managers and Administrators and the Business Forms Management Association.

In the three years since, the Supreme Court has issued Administrative Order No. 1987-8 encourag-ing the voluntary use of letter-size paper in Michigan courts. All court forms approved by the State CourtAdministrative Office are on letter size. And both the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals havesimplified their orders and are using letter size for orders and opinions.

Now Senate Bill 239 has been introduced by Senator Virgil C. Smith, Jr. The bill, originally draftedby the commission, would require that the documents used by state and local public bodies be on lettersize. In support of that bill we make this last pass at the subject.

IN FEDERAL COURTS

By Judy Christie and Steve Harrington

Harrington: How did the Federalcourt system institute [in 1983] therule requiring only letter-size paper?

Christie: Lawyers were given fairwarning. They had at least six monthsto use up their stock of legal-size pa-per. But so many attorneys were al-ready using letter size that the ruledidn't catch many by surprise.

Today, we simply don't accept anydocuments on legal-size paper. If law-yers try to file legal-size documentswith us, we just ask them if they'drather have us cut off the top or thebottom. Some think we're kidding,

"Plain Language" is a regular feature of theMichigan Bar Journal, edited by JosephKimble for the State Bar Plain English Com-mittee. Assistant editor is George H. Hathaway.Through this column the Committee hopes topromote the use of plain English in the law.Want to contribute a Plain Language article?Contact Prof. Kimble at Cooley Law School,P.O. Box 13038, Lansing, MI 48901.

but we're not. The rule has been toogood to us to make exceptions.

Harrington: How has the policybeen received?

Christie: Very well. Our only prob-lem is with removals from state courts.Even though some attorneys copythose pleadings on letter-size paperfor us, we still have to accept the statecourt files on legal-size paper, andthat presents a real problem for us.

Harrington: Why are legal-size doc-uments such a problem?

Christie: They require the largerfiles which don't fit well on our shelv-ing. We redesigned our records areawhen the rule was adopted and gainedtwenty percent additional filing spaceby shifting to letter-size open shelving.

In addition to the storage problem,the mixture of sizes causes a loss ofefficiency when documents are micro-fiched, something which the court isjust beginning but which we believe isthe answer to security and mainte-nance problems posed by the thou-sands of legal documents we accepteach year.

Harrington: How many documentsare filed annually in the EasternDistrict?

Christie. The number of documentsfiled differs with each case. But eachyear, we have about 7,000 civil casesand 2,000 criminal cases filed. We'veestimated that about 3 million piecesof paper are filed yearly with the court.That gives you an idea of how busythis district is.

To understand the inconvenienceof legal-size paper, it is important toconsider that we are required to keeprecords at the courthouse for fiveyears. That means we have roughly45,000 case files here at the court atany given time, and one of our con-tinuing problems is finding the spaceto store all the paper. We have al-ready transferred two years of civiland criminal files to the basement,but we are still pressed for convenientstorage facilities.

Harrington: Besides saving space,are there other advantages to letter-size paper?

Christie: We save money by buyingfiles in the smaller size. Then whenwe ship them after five years to theFederal Record Center in Chicago, wereceive additional savings if the filesare letter size because we can fit morepaper in the shipping boxes.

MICHIGAN BAR JOURNAL JULY [989MICHIGAN BAR JOURNAL JULY 1989

PLAIN LANGUAGE

Besides the money saved, a stan-dard size is more orderly. State remov-als stick out on our shelves and natu-rally receive a bit more battering thanthe letter-size files.

Harrington: What about exhibits?Christie: We do except exhibits from

our court rule, but more and more of-ten we see attorneys reducing them tothe smaller size if that is feasible.

Harrington: Has the letter-size requirement had other effects on therecords system?

Christie: Besides the savings inspace, we're saving time and moneywhen we have to copy pleadings. Thatis a big part of a record clerk's job, andcopying is much quicker when he orshe is dealing with a standard papersize and the automatic paper feedercan be used.

Harrington: What about costs? Canyou put a dollar figure on the amountsaved?

Christie: There hasn't been a costanalysis by the federal court systemand, in retrospect, there should havebeen. I'm sure that the savings in time,space, and material have been sub-stantial, but we don't have any figuresto back up my hunch.

Harrington: What about critics ofthe rule?

Christie: Some say that you canwrite more on legal-size paper but thetruth is that most legal secretaries usehuge margins. I took an old file atrandom to find out how much differ-ence those few inches made. I foundthat a 155-page, legal-size file couldbe transferred to a letter-size file of159 pages. That's only 2 percentthicker. But you've reduced the lengthby 21 percent. The overall effect isthat you have reduced the total vol-ume of space required to store thisfile by about 20 percent.

Harrington: If there is a change bystate courts, would you expect it to becostly for attorneys?

Christie: No. Many don't under-stand that letter size can be phased in.Old supplies can be used up beforeletter size is required, and any

Judy Christie holds !egal a tY

costs in going toa rd e don'thave to be borne ala c

Harrington: Wh abit those whoprefer the tradition of legal-size paper?

Christie: I don't have a reasoned re-sponse for traditionalis,never heard of a cout ddated because it was oc rsizeper. We probably faced ecry when the court! chage oquill pens to typewriters bu csystem survived.

Harrington: Would nytvince those who prefe i

Christie: I welcoe anywants to see how orcy o sStandardizato asbe or fi

cientbecaus we don' hve oseveral different aper n whave saved storage soa dments also have bettep aaralthough I believe ta is ytributable to the trieas te ewe adopted when thc Ic i wmadated.

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JULY 1989

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MICHIGAN BARJURA

PLAIN LANGUAGE

of society is sweeping the courts. Useof letter-size paper seems to be readilyjustifiable just for reasons of uniform-ity, efficiency, and hence economy.But the survey seems to show thathand-in-hand with the change toshort paper comes a move to clarityand simplicity. We cannot prove anycausal effect; nor does use of letter-size paper depend on simplification.Nevertheless, orders are becomingbriefer, and the "wheretofores' and"hereinunders" are disappearing.

Procedure of SurveyWe contacted the clerks office of

the highest court in all 50 states. Inaddition to the question about papersize, we asked for sample orders. Wewanted to know about actual practicerather than legislation or court rules.Not surprisingly, the issue is timely allacross the country. The clerk in Lousiana had conducted a similar surveyconcentrating on court rules.

The response was positive. No onerefused to answer our questions, and35 states sent sample orders (one office charged us a dollar).

ResultsForty states are using letter-size pa-

per for their standard orders: Alaska,Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colo-rado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia,Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Ken-tucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachu-setts, (Michigan), Minnesota, Mis-souri, Montana, Nebraska, NewHampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico,New York, North Carolina, North Da-kota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania,Rhode Island, South Carolina, SouthDakota, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Vir-ginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, andWyoming.

Seven states and the District of Co-lumbia are using legal size: Alabama,D.C., Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Mis-sissippi, Nevada, and Washington.

Three states are using both:Kansas: A recent change in the

court rules permits either size; they

expect a move to standard size onlyin the future.

Oklahoma: Court rules requirestandard size for pleadings; somejudges still use legal size for ordersand opinions.

Tennessee: Both sizes are used, butstill mostly legal size.

Besides the trend toward letter size3 trend toward individually com-

puter-generated orders. Only 10 of the35 smles received were pre-printedoiders.

I mentioned, there seems to alsoe rend toward simplicity and brev-

ity ad away from legalese. However,h ples still show a wide range

of sge. Nw York, for example, usesshor paper but old 1abits die hard:

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Compaire that ith Iowa's

"After consideratior by this or, tlhmotion to dismiss Ls denied."

On this spectrum MicIhia ietainly

falls toward the brie and plain

"The Court orders iho th aplictionfor leave to appe ii DENED jor lackof merit in the gro d resentd

So despite th tret, nuiber ofthese orders violate we11-acceptedrules of plain Ergish. David Mellin-koff, author of Legal tung: Sense andNonsense, would prbably describe theorder from New uor a .'wsick."Mellinkoff call fo break with thetradition o bad Iegil writng and sug-gests as a starting noint this 15-itemcut list: old formalisms, worthless Oldand Middle Engish words, antiqueand current coupled sysonyms, re-dundant modifiers, inflation, repeti-tion, circular platitudes, hornbooklaw, citations for hornbook law, boil-erplate introductions, worthless defi-nitions, worthless labels, a choke of

MICHIGAN BAR JOURNAL

quotations, and footnotes loaded withtext.

Given the narrow scope of standardorders, I chose three of Mellinkoff'scategories and analyzed the sampleorders.

Coupled synonyms seem to havealmost disappeared, with only an oc-casional "be and the same is," "or-dered and adjudged," and "reverseand annul."

Redundant modifiers also seem tobe losing favor with the exception of"above entitled" or "above captioned"and "foregoing."

The third category is Old and Mid-dle English words. In his Appendix A,Mellinkoff lists 53 examples from"aforesaid" to "witnesseth" that he be-lieves can be dropped from the legalvocabulaiy, without any loss of preci-sion, and with a gain in clarity. Al-hough a number of orders are with-

out any of these archaic terms,"hereby made it onto eleven orders-'heiein "hereunto," "heretofore,"and "said" (adjective) appeared twice;and all the following appeared once:"hereto," "whereof," "whereas,""thereon," "thereupon," "foregoing,""whereof," "to wit," "therein," "there-of." It is ironic that even better orderssuffered from the use of these Oldand Middle English terms, becausedeleting them is the easiest step totake and they should be the first to go.

Judy Christie graduated from Oakland University with a masters degree in public administration. She is the administrative manager ofthe United States District Court for the EasternDistrict of Michigan. She has worked in thefederal court system for eight years.Steve Harrington graduated from ThomaI MCooley Law School and is a news reporter forthe Michigan Lawyers Weckly. le ha published articles on copyright law and lgalwriting.Sanna Dtlrk McAra graduatd from the Uni-versity of Michigan with a master degree inlinguistics. She is a Kudent at Thomas M,Cooley Law School She urveyed tate courtsas an intern for the Plain English teomrntte.

JULY 1989