Briefs (In Legal Terms)

Dudley, Sean. Montana YMCA and Youth Government. Accessed Wednesday, October 27, 2010.  http://home.mcn.net/~montanabw/briefsmpl.html

For my second workplace document I looked at a sample appellate brief filed with the Supreme Court of the state of Montana. Briefs are legal document prepared by a party to the Court. It contains information on the facts of the case, the legal issues to be decided, the law that the Court ought to apply, and the decision the party desires the Court to reach (Dudley). I retrieved this document from Montana YMCA Youth and Government website. This site contains a lot of useful information, sample documents, case facts, and other information that helps future or current members of the legal field get a better understand of work as it relates to their field.  This particular brief though has one particular purpose it serves as a model for how to write an appellate brief in the court of the state of Montana. While this is the intended purpose of this document it may also be used by other members of this field no matter the state they reside in because in most instances briefs follow a universal format. Although, there may be minor changes depending on the court and state in which the attorney is preparing it for. 

Briefs are very structured and particular in their formatting. The first element of the brief should be the title page which contains the place and state in which the brief is prepared as shown in the sample document “IN THE YMCA MODEL SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF MONTANA.” The case number(s), name of the appellant and the respondent as stated in the case, identification of the brief as being that of the Appellant or the Respondent, court from which the case originated, notation that an oral argument is requested, name and address (either home or school is acceptable) of Attorneys appearing before the court (in a real brief, the opposing council is known in advance and their names are also included). Second, comes the table of contents which includes is a separate, single page that lists each element of the brief and the corresponding page number.  The arguments are the bread and butter of briefs and are therefore also listed with bold font and corresponding page numbers in the table of contents page. Third is the Table of Authorities page. The table of authorities in this model is a list of about a page long and contains all materials used to support the argument. Traditionally this page includes every page in the brief where the particular excerpt is found. It is similar to the bibliography of a term paper, except that the citation format is different, and cases are usually grouped by type (e.g.state statute, case law, etc.). Fourth comes the statement of the issue which is a very short introductory statement of the legal issues or points of law involved in the case. The fifth and preceding statement is the statement of facts which is a retelling of the facts from the client's point of view. This section should be a minimum of one page, but, should not exceed two pages (Dudley). The sixth element of a brief is the actual argument. This is the core of the brief and is designed somewhat like writing a persuasive essay with lots of research references. It presents support for the issues presented earlier. Solid research is used to back every part of the argument. Arguments must be well-organized and convincing; attorneys will win or lose their case based on the quality and substance of what is said in this section. The last part of the brief is the conclusion section. This is where the Attorney team summarizes their argument and specifically states the result desired. The conclusion in a Model Supreme Court brief can be as short as one sentence, and should not exceed a single short paragraph (Dudley). Immediately behind the conclusion statements are the signatures of the Attorney team.

This is a sample or rather a model document of an appellate brief. As I have actually seen and handled a brief document for the state of Virginia before I must say it is very accurate. Every element listed within this sample document is factual. This was a great workplace document to analyze and I found it very informative.

Legal Research [It Just May Cost You]

Ard Constance. "Legal Research In The Age of Open Law." Online, 34(5), 29. Retrieved from MasterFILE

Laws effect the everyday functions of societies around the globe they govern and shape the way in which we live as an entire human species (financial, market, domestic etc.).  So in this regard why shouldn’t individuals be concerned with the legal research? As I began to conduct legal research I found it quite difficult to find any free and credible documentation on legal issues, cases, and laws. I became completely fluttered and frustrated with this discovery. In my frantic search I came across this article by Ard Constance titled “Legal Research in the Open Age of Law.”In this article Constance contends to explain to his audience the ultimate goal of “open law” and also why it should be an arousing concern for those interested in legal research.

Constance states that the “ultimate goal” of open law is to “make the documents and decisions created within government resources, such as the judiciary and federal agencies, freely available to the public user (29). Why is the important? Think about it research is important to the breakthroughs that have occurred in this world. If research was not conducted, recorded, and analyzed we would have nothing to help us progress forward.  Likewise, we could say the same thing in respect to legal research we would have no precedents or incite on handling cases and making or executing laws without the research and recording of previous courtroom cases and laws. 

Why is this information not readily available?

Constance main purpose in this article is to address the global open law movement that is in effect. Constance asserts that Public legal information is digital common property and should be accessible to all on a nonprofit basis and [where possible] free of charge (30). There is a global initiative to fix these concerns; Members of this community commonly refer to this as  “search” and “retrieval” of legal information (32). Several countries around the globe have designed portals and free online search engines to make legal information readily available to citizens.

·         www.archive.org/details/texts

·         http://search.usa.gov

·         http://public.resource.org/index.html

·         www.doaj.org

·         www.justia.com

·         www.plol.org/Pages/Search.aspx

·          www.glin.gov/search.action

This article certainly answered my question about legal research while also making me aware of its issue. It provided me with fact, resources, and helpful data for future use on this group project.

Legal Writing

Rombauer Dick Majorie and Squires B. Lynn. "Legal Writing In A Nutshell." American Bar Association Journal. JSTOR. Web. 6 Oct. 2010.

Lynn B. Squires was a legal writing associate at the University of Washington School of Law and Marjorie Dick Rombauer was a professor of law at Washington. Together this scholar and teacher of law wrote a book outlining the most essential and effective qualities that a law student should possess to become successful in their particular field of legal expertise in respect to their writing proficiency.

At the start of this book Romabauer and Squire recognizes that lawyers use different approaches to writing depending on their purpose of the document being written. Law office memorandums differ from petitions and power of attorney documents differ from motions.  Despite the document genre the authors contend to show its audience applicable techniques that may be applied to any document style. Although the target audience of this book is law students anyone who seeks to improve their writing skills may find this piece of literature helpful (as I did).  One particular section in this book focuses on the art of writing clear and cohesive sentences.  " The principles of sentence constructions are few and simple. First, begin a sentence with its subject, if you can. Second, place the object close to the verb" (Rombauer and Squires 22). These are specific techniques that the authors give  to ensure that the writer is writing effectively. Rombauer and Squire further in the chapter then shows the difference between legal and non-legal writing. "The reader expects the subject to come first. If it does not, then the reader must remember all words the words that precede the subject until the subject appears" (36). Another chapter describes how to make one's prose more precise. The writer is advised to use words in their literal sense to dispense with such "archaic legalisms" as "herein" "aforesaid" as opposed to using common terms such as "because", "rather" than "prior to".   The book also contains helpful information on the organization of legal writing. It describes the way a large scale writing should be organized including briefs and memorandas'and then states principles of shorter units of organization that can be applied to the analysis of particular questions and issues within the larger projects. This book also covers the organization of paragraphs and transitional paragraphs.

This book successfully teaches principles and techniques that lawyers can use in their various writing tasks. Although this book intended audience is to writers a lot of the information found within can be used universally with any person that has problems when it comes to technical writing (writing with a purpose). I found this book extremely helpful as it may be applicable to my current area of study (English) and my future field of study (law).

Legal Discourse & Technical Writing

Have you ever taken the time to sit down and analyze at least one legal work or document? Most individuals will respond no to this because people are not really interested in the intricate details such as writing in respect to the criminal justice system. I would like to pose this question--Without writing where would the legal justice system stand? It would be almost inoperable in my opinion. Every legal action that has ever taking place in history has been documented. These documentations govern the way in which future disputes are resolved nationwide.

The entire legal discourse has created systematic processes to govern the way in which legal writings are posed. Legal documents are designed in such a way that no matter your focus if you are apart of the legal discourse itself you will be familiar with the terminology, framework, and significance of the document in question.  To better understand this statement let’s take a look at this  Sexual Assault Petition:

http://www.courts.wa.gov/forms/documents/SA1_015.doc

This document can be a considered a technical legal document because it poses a solution to a particular problem. A petition by definition is  a written request signed by many people demanding a specific action from an authority or government.

This documents is specific and is designed to allocate for an individual who is being sexually abused. The first half of this document is gathering standard information from the party who is ordering the petition. Pay close attention to the bold sub-heading on the second page Restrain, Prohibit, Exclude.  These words were used for a particular reason they give strong meaning to the document.  Scroll down a little further to the bottom of this page and take notice to the bold heading Request for a Temporary Sexual Assault Protection Order the document's purpose is specifically stated:  An Emergency Exists as described in the statement below. Petitioner needs a temporary protection order issued. Further down on the next page the document contends to further assert its purpose by defining terms and technically describing the actions that this order of protection serves.

This paper was very effective if you were a member of this discourse community. The authors’ presented a problem and proposed a possible solution to the problem.


References

Pattern Forms Committee and the Administrative Office of the Courts, State of Washington, 2004.  http://www.courts.wa.gov/forms/index.cfm?fa=forms.contribute&formID=65

Anatomy of Search Engines

What qualifies a writing to be both technical and academic? Technical writing by definition of Dennis G. Jerz is the presentation of information that help the reader solve a particular problem. An academic writing as we all know is any piece of information designed to inform or educate its readers on a particular subject or issue. Therefore a technical academic writing should inform or propose a solution to a particular problem. Along with this the document should be easily readable, has a distinct purpose, and captures the attention of its audience.

To get a better understanding of technical writing I analyzed a paper written by two potential Ph.D students at Stanford University; Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page titled, “The Anatomy of a Large Scale Hyper Textual Web Search Engine.”  This document falls under the computer and engineering genre of academic writing.  From the title alone the reader can infer that this reading is about to inform its audience on a particular issue. Anatomy by definition describes the make-up of something. So the reader knows that the purpose of this writing is to discuss the make-up of a large scale hyper textual web search engine. Furthermore, the purpose of this paper is directly identified in the abstract of the paper, “This paper addresses this question of how to build a practical large-scale system which can exploit the additional information present in hypertext (Brin and Page, para. 4).” This reassures that this is a technical writing because the authors state that they are proposing a solution to a problem.

Brim and Page’s argument is direct “the goal of our system is to address many of the problems, both in quality and scalability, introduced by scaling search engine technology to such extraordinary numbers.” What does this mean? As Brim and Page stated with numerical facts and data computer search queries are steadily increasing. If the number of users continue to rise then main stream search engines need to start considering ways to handle the increase in users so that they may continue to provide “pertinent text information” to their users (Brin and Page).

As you move further down into the paper the authors are beginning to formulate ethos for their purpose of writing. They are stating facts and presenting numerical data about the problems that currently exist with search engines. The authors also proceed to explain the purpose and construction of GOOGLE (main stream search engine company) search engines which is the search engine of discussion in this paper. Providing this information is useful because it helps the audience to get a better understanding of why it is necessary or important to consider modifying search engines. The authors’ value improvement and efficiency of search engines as it is discussed repeatedly throughout this paper.

This paper was very effective if you were a member of this discourse community. The authors’ presented a problem, provided evidence for why this problem exists, and proposed a possible solution to the problem. Search engine efficiency is not a very popular topic of discussion. But, Brin and Page presented their argument well and made their audience aware of the importance of having a well sustained and easily modifiable search engine.


References

Brin Sergey and Page Lawrence (2010). The anatomy of a large scale hyper textual web search engine [Electronic Version]. Computer Science. Retrived September 21, 2010 from  http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html.