Co-defendant's Appellate Brief – Click to enlarge
Co-defendant's brief reformatted – Click to enlarge
Bryan Garner is right when he says that clients hire lawyers to persuade. Sometimes I think that we forget that. Recently, I was appointed to represent one of two defendants on an appeal in a federal criminal case. The first page is a page from the co-defendant’s counsel’s brief. Without reading a word, you can see how his lack of care in formatting his work renders the brief uninteresting and unpersuasive (who’d want to read 40 to 50 pages like this?).
