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Does The Readability Of Your Brief Affect Your Chance Of Winning An Appeal?--An Analysis Of Readability In Appellate Briefs And Its Correlation With Success On Appeal, Lance N. Long, William F. Christensen
Does The Readability Of Your Brief Affect Your Chance Of Winning An Appeal?--An Analysis Of Readability In Appellate Briefs And Its Correlation With Success On Appeal, Lance N. Long, William F. Christensen
Lance N. Long
The study described in this article suggests that the length of sentences and words, which is “readability” for our purposes, probably does not make much difference in appellate brief writing. First, we found that most briefs are written at about the same level of readability; there simply is not much difference in how lawyers write appellate briefs when it comes to the length of sentences and words. Furthermore, the readability of most appellate briefs is well within the reading ability of the highly educated audience of appellate judges and justices. Second, the relatively small differences in readability are not related …
Clearly, Using Intensifiers Is Very Bad--Or Is It?, Lance N. Long, William F. Chistensen
Clearly, Using Intensifiers Is Very Bad--Or Is It?, Lance N. Long, William F. Chistensen
Lance N. Long
Although scholars have generally found that overusing intensifiers (words such as “clearly,” “obviously,” and “very”) negatively affects the persuasiveness or credibility of a legal argument, no one has studied actual appellate briefs to determine whether there is a relationship between intensifier use and the outcome of an appeal. This article describes two empirical studies of appellate briefs, which show that the frequent use of intensifiers in appellate briefs (particularly by an appellant) is usually associated with a statistically significant increase in adverse outcomes for an “offending” party. But--and this was an unexpected result--if an appellate opinion uses a high rate …