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Various legal systems have standards for the form for which documents should be submitted to them which are surprisingly nitpicky in terms of items like fonts a
by Macha 4y ago
Various legal systems have standards for the form for which documents should be submitted to them which are surprisingly nitpicky in terms of items like fonts and spacing. Of course, these standards were created when typewriters were the dominant use case, so had deference to what typewriters could actually do. Even though most of the typewriter use has fallen out of fashion, the standards remain, with the results that the documents look like they came out of a typewriter even if (as I suspect in this case) it's just been printed then faxed.
- jdgoesmarching 4y agoAt this point it also probably makes it easier for law-specific OCR software to round up the standard metadata. With the sheer volume of paperwork in that industry, nobody is interested in reinventing the regex wheel for every document.
- spookthesunset 4y agoNot to mention the real cost of every person reading each document having to relearn how this document is laid out vs every other document. There is a non-trivial human cost to not having a standard document format. Even if it is old and crusty. Also looks like most courts have a style guide for you to follow: https://www.jud.ct.gov/Publications/Manual_of_style.pdf https://www.jud.ct.gov/Publications/Manual_of_style.pdf
- SilasX 4y agoDoesn't explain why they'd never get with the time and accept electronic submissions, which are probably easier on their end too.
- dragonwriter 4y agoFederal courts accept (and often have rules requiring-by-default, for most purpose) electronic submission.
- SilasX 4y agoAnd you didn’t feel the need to mention that in your reply to the parent comment, that introduced this assumption that I was building off of?
- tjohns 4y agoElectronic submission still involves uploading a PDF, which has to follow the court's rules for layout of printed pages. It just means it the file gets directly added into the case's docket, rather than having to be manually scanned in by the clerks' office.
- KptMarchewa 4y agoYou'd think by using electronic submission they'd go with machine readable format.
- dragonwriter 4y agoThat would be a lot more work (because of the need to accept exceptional paper submissions, and get them into the required format) and cost for both the courts and every law office that might have need to file in federal court, for potentially very little benefit, since the processes filings support are human processes for the foreseeable future, independently of the data format.
- Ekaros 4y agoAlso it makes things more equal. Like appellant courts can tell only x number of pages. And for that sort of limit to make sense the line spacing, font size and margins need to be consistent. With only set of fonts allowed. Courts really don't want to argue about how any submission is laid out and in best case they get to just throw out something looking wrong saving their time.
- dragonwriter 4y agoConsistency also means that rules that state “pages” are meaningful limits, not something subject to unresitricted gaming, and that they retain that over time.
- jamiek88 4y agoAlso a method my high school English teacher used to standardise pages after one too many (i.e. one) comic sans 18pt hand ins. We could use a computer at a certain font, linespace and margin so a 10 page essay was consistent. Which was lots better than other teachers who just said ‘nope, handwritten please’.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> Also a method my high school English teacher used to standardise pages after one too many (i.e. one) comic sans 18pt hand ins. Yeah, exactly. The courts are more worried about Helvetica Narrow 6 than Comic Sans 18; flip side of the same coin, since they tend to have upper rather than lower bounds.
- andirk 4y agoThere's definitely a fax machine at some point in this document's journey.
- SoftTalker 4y agoScanner probably, to capture the signatures and the clerk's stamp on the front page.