It’s about verifying the word count by looking at the number of pages. Making X pages roughly equal to Y words (or at least characters). By itself, typeface/fo

It’s about verifying the word count by looking at the number of pages. Making X pages roughly equal to Y words (or at least characters). By itself, typeface/font doesn’t matter. But typeface/font, combined with character size and white space rules (indents, line spacing, spaces after commas, etc.) are necessary for word counts to have meaning. Otherwise, a lawyer could use a very small font, low size, or very little white space to cram more words in the same space. So really it’s about being able to verify the word count by looking at the paper and not counting the words.