A Font by Any Other Name Does Not Read the Same, Redux

On May 19^th, my post on this blog covered the different requirements and suggestions that federal circuit courts have for the font used in any brief. A Font by Any Other Name Does Not Read the Same.

Now, the Seventh Circuit has weighed in on the subject in a new opinion written by Judge Easterbrook. The underlying dispute concerned a business lease. However, what made the opinion newsworthy was its discussion of fonts. The plaintiff’s lawyer chose to write his opposition to a motion to dismiss using “Bernhard Modern, a display face suited to movie posters and used in the title sequence of the Twilight Zone TV show,” according to the court. AsymaDesign, LLC v. CBL & Assocs. Mgmt., Inc., No. 23-2495, 2024 WL 2813827, at *2 (7th Cir. June 3, 2024). If you assumed that comment telegraphs the court’s attitude about its use, you stand on solid ground.

The opinion directs practitioners to review the court’s Handbook, available at https://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/rules-procedures/Hand-book.pdf, for “important advice about typography” and reminds attorneys that they should give due regard for the “sore eyes of judges who must read copious legal materials.” Id. The Handbook, the court reminds everyone, suggests that lawyers select “type-faces (often called fonts) suited for use in books and other long-form presentations” and choose the “most legible face available to you.” Id. It further states that “[d]isplay faces such as Bodoni or Bernhard Modern wear out judicial eyes after just a few pages,” “make understanding harder,” and is not exactly conducive “to easy reading of long passages.” Id.

It concludes with the fervent “hope that Bernhard Modern has made its last appearance in an appellate brief.” Id.

Two days later, an in-circuit district court cited that passage to register its complaint about a brief that omitted page numbers. Kika C. v. O'Malley, No. 22 C 1502, 2024 WL 2873557, at *3 n.6 (N.D. Ill. June 5, 2024).