This colorful image was included in the State Appellate Defender Office’s brief recently filed with the Michigan Supreme Court in People v Soriano (Docket No. 167373). Disclaimer: I don’t know whether SADO used any AI tools as a resource when deciding how to caption this image in its brief. Even so, the image and SADO’s…
Tag: legal writing
Google NotebookLM for pre-filing review in Michigan
NotebookLM can be an efficient and collaborative tool as the legal filer checks for proper document and citation formatting—a painstaking task often overlooked. Missing elements can result in a rejected filing or poorly reflect on the writer’s professional competency. For trial court filings, one can create a “Notebook” and upload MCR 1.109, the Michigan Appellate…
Images in legal writing? Include descriptive captions. AI can help.
A “captions” search of this website recalls earlier posts on why image captions play an important—but often overlooked—role in persuasive and informative legal writing. Three times, the State Appellate Defender Office included excellent descriptive image captions in its Application for Leave to Appeal in People v David Serges (167154). The Michigan Supreme Court recently ordered…
(Emojis omitted.)
Legal-decision readers are familiar with quotation parentheticals like (emphasis added/omitted/changed), (alteration in original), (quotation marks and citation omitted), or (cleaned up). A new kid shows up every once in a great while: (emojis omitted). I noticed (emojis omitted) in the August 29, 2024 memorandum decision from the Indiana Court of Appeals Shannon v Indiana, 23A-CR-2744…
Seeing how judicial decision-making benefits when using a “focus order”
A “focus order” is an order from the court to the parties directing them to focus their upcoming briefing and argument on specified issues. The Michigan Supreme Court routinely includes “focus” instructions in its argument orders. For years, the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers has found the focus order tool to be positive and productive…
The case for adding the new Black’s Law Dictionary (12th Edition) to your legal-writing toolbox
The 12th Edition of Black’s Law Dictionary was released early last month. Chief Editor Bryan A. Garner and publisher Thomson Reuters highlight that 2,500 new terms have been added to the more than 70,000 law-related words and phrases. Thousands of Latin maxims also make their debut. Plus, every page has been supplemented and revised. Price:…
Prompting Claude.ai and ChatGPT to outline a new Michigan Supreme Court decision
Today, the Michigan Supreme Court issued a split opinion in People v Prude (Docket 165664)—a case that was decided without oral argument. Because users can now attach files with their “prompts” when using the free versions of the generative AI tools Claude.ai and ChatGPT, I decided to take each for a spin to outline the…
Justice Barrett’s dissent-framing style
Justice Barrett’s recent dissent in Fischer v. United States captures her statutory-analysis approach. Her conversational writing style—one that can be easily understood by the lay public—may be thought of as common sense. It’s also fair to assume that Justice Kagan contributed to some of its tone since she (and Justice Sotomayor) joined it. Justice Barrett’s…
Informational brackets can be used to describe text or social media exchanges
The Court of Appeals in Ohio recently issued an opinion that nicely describes message exchanges that happened on Facebook Messenger—and the court did it without copying and pasting images. Instead, the opinion uses informational brackets as highlighted below from an excerpt. The risk of using uncaptioned images in opinions is that the images are often…
How judges can draft and add easy-to-understand summaries in their written decisions
Summary for Pro Se Plaintiff The magistrate judge is recommending that the motion for summary judgment be granted. Your evidence does not show that Nurse Yule, Nurse Practitioner Housley, or Dr. Wong acted in ways that they knew were likely to cause you additional harm or suffering. Such evidence is required to show a violation…