Most Used Font for Documents

Legal documents must be legible and legible. Therefore, it is important to use a more professional font style. There is no specific policy that fits all legal documents. The following fonts are the best fonts to use by lawyers in agreements, letters, briefs, and other documents. Always check with your jurisdiction for specific rules for accepted legal policies. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court requires that Century family fonts be used in all memoirs. Recently, the Virginia Supreme Court released a new list of acceptable fonts. And the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit says lawyers should avoid using Times New Roman — so their audience is less likely to quickly scan legal briefs without retaining the contents of the document. The Florida Supreme Court also recently issued new appeal rules for police for lawyers. The new rules include changing the number of pages and words for briefs and appeal submissions for computer-generated documents. Specifically, they require lawyers to use Arial or Bookman Old Style in 14 points to ensure readability on monitors.

The policy you use may affect or interrupt your company`s writing. Choose a font that best suits the purpose and style of your message, and you`ll get a professional and easy-to-read document. You have more freedom in choosing a modern and interesting font for your company`s website than for legal documents. But there are some best practices. Serif fonts have tails and are mainly used for newspapers (Times New Roman) and print media, while sans serif fonts are tailless and are usually associated with websites. Serif fonts usually represent a modern image of the law firm, and serif fonts associated with newspapers are more of a classic or traditional image. Serif fonts include Cambria, Georgia, Garamond, Book Antiqua, and Didot. Sans serif fonts include Calibri, Helvetica, Verdana, Trebuchet MS and Lato. For your legal documents, you want a legible and classic font, while your online font should be modern and distinctive. Both aim to engage your audience.

Paperless law firms use many digital document services such as DocuSign, and more and more lawyers are seeing them on their mobile devices. Choosing a readable font can make all the difference in these scenarios. If you want to automate your bank statements, business letters, contracts, and other official documents, Windward`s document automation solutions can make the job easy and efficient for you and your team. Let`s dive a little deeper into the meaning of legal fonts. When combining fonts, take a quick look at the relationship between ascendant and descendant (such as the tails on your ds and ps) versus letters as a whole. Try using fonts with similar proportions. Well, that`s not exactly the best advice according to police specialists. We remind the reader that this list is by no means exhaustive. An excellent book that is practically exhaustive is Peter Dawson`s The Essential Type Directory. No matter what reference you use, today`s printing industry is faced with countless fonts for you to choose from. Think about the impression you`re trying to convey (and if you`re unsure about the impact a font can have, scroll through those typographic posters quickly). Consider the target audience, your own brand identity, surrounding color and design.

Fonts can have very different personalities. Helvetica, for example, is clean, crispy and neutral. Gill Sans has a 1950s authoritative voice feel (the BBC uses it, and it`s also very close to the now ubiquitous Keep Calm and Carry On poster). Times New Roman has a certain sense of „I didn`t think about it, so I used Word`s default font.“ Garamond is the first serif font on our list. Garamond is a classic font style that dates back to the France of the 17th century and is one of the most elegant fonts you can choose. Garamond is best known as a typeface for publishing. You can use it whenever you want to convey a sense of classic taste and sophistication. All content on your site should be stylistically consistent, and the font plays an important role in this. Imagine if your favorite brand suddenly added random fonts. You`d notice, wouldn`t you? Most companies may not think much about the fonts they use in a document, but this is a mistake that can be compared to a singer who doesn`t care about the instrument used to sing.

Fonts add tone to a document and make communication clearer and more engaging. Fonts in documents can be compared to handwriting. You probably know someone whose writing is always a pleasure to read, while someone else`s writing can immediately keep you from reading. For something read online, the default secure option is Arial for the body text and Times New Roman for the title. Or you can try Helvetica for the body and Century Schoolbook for the headlines. For printing, if you`re tired of Times New Roman, try Garamond for running text and compare it with Frutiger or Futura for titles. Font availability depends on your software and if you`re using a PC or Mac, you`ll find complete lists in Will Harris and Douglas Bonneville`s list of 19 best font pairs in 19 combinations. Determine who will interact with the document and in what format. A policy that works well for your physical contracts may not be as readable if your law firm goes paperless. Your legal documents, including contracts, briefs and memos, will look very different from your law firm`s website. It`s easy to get overwhelmed by all the design decisions.

By ensuring that your legal documents are as readable as possible for your clients, other lawyers and judges, etc., you show that you care about the user experience. This contributes to a positive brand perception of your law firm. Memorizing these ten style fonts can be an important trade secret in the printing industry. Being able to combine them effortlessly like a wine manager will differentiate your business and give you credibility with knowledgeable typographers and graphic designers. You can read more about how designers use all of these fonts on the site, fontsinuse.com serif fonts aren`t typically used for text to be read on the screen, as serifs appear blurry on lower-resolution screens and can affect readability. However, some serif fonts, like Georgia, are specifically designed to look good even on low-resolution screens (and you can see it in action on the New York Times website). The world`s best-known wheelbase font has recently lost popularity just below Garamond. The Times of London commissioned the newspaper in 1931. She used the script for forty years. Readers will always associate it with journalism and publishers use it every day for books and general prints. Their reputation makes them the perfect font for brands that want to convey a solid and reliable image. Let`s look at some of the different uses of fonts: If you`re developing a law firm website, it`s important to note that your website will make a first impression on clients.

It must be professionally designed and the logo at the top of your company`s website, letterheads, and business cards represent the company. It must be designed to represent the image of the company. Looking at the font style for the company`s logo and website, there are two categories of font styles: serif and sans-serif. Sans serif fonts don`t have small strokes on their letters, giving them a cleaner, more modern style. Some recommended sans serif fonts are Arial, Calibri, and Verdana. When choosing a legal policy, think about how your reader will read your legal document. What works for a court request may not work for a contract that your client signs through a digital app like DocuSign. In addition, more and more lawyers, lawyers and even clients are working from anywhere, even on a mobile device. This means it`s more important than ever to streamline legal documents so that they`re easy to read on any screen. Using Times New Roman or Arial in font sizes that are too small is no longer enough. Take a look at how Dennis and King use their stack of fonts to grab readers` attention on the page. Although not mandatory, sans serif fonts are generally easier to read on screens.

The default font size for legal documents is size 12. Some lawyers increase their font size to 14 to improve readability on screens. However, readers` expectations have an impact on readability. Give someone a 50-page report in a sans serif font, and ignorance can certainly take a hit. Similarly, people don`t expect to read newspaper-style fonts online. If you use one as a conscious style choice, do it – make sure it`s justified. (By that we mean that you have the right to do so, not that it fits both sides of the page.) You`ll see serif fonts in newspapers, books, and magazines because they`re easier to read on paper and give the page a more traditional feel.