The Perverse Incentives of Page Limits v. Word Limits
Posted on by admin
Some courts impose word limits. Other courts impose page limits. I do not like page limits. Crafty attorneys can use various methods to adjust the page-count. For example, they can tweak justification, page breaks, end-of-line hyphenation, and other elements to make a document take up less space. Of course, the most blatant trick is to bury stuff in footnotes. Footnotes are usually single-spaced, and in a smaller font. I’ll admit that I’ve used this approach in the past when I was running up against a word limit. The nature of a page limit creates this perverse incentive. I much prefer word limits. That number measures everything you write, regardless of the spacing and formatting issues.
Recently, Judge Boasberg (DDC) a brief “for violating the Court’s Local Rule on excessive footnotes, particularly given the length of the footnotes.”
OH, SNAP: Judge strikes Justice Dept brief in lawsuit over recordkeeping of Trump foreign-leader calls, says footnotes are too long & violate local rules. Offending filing saved from memory hole: Order from Judge Boasberg (Obama appointee):
— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein)
This was filed by the DOJ Federal Programs Branch. There were twelve footnotes. The longest was seventeen lines! Far short of a , but really long for a legal brief.
I suspect Judge Boasberg may have been miffed by DOJ’s practice before, and wanted to send a message.
