So, I'm a bit of an idiot

When I was a practicing lawyer, I'd often wake up in the middle of the night thinking about a case. Or, to more accurately state it, I'd wake up in a dead panic wondering if I missed a deadline or forgot to call someone back, or committed some other act of malpractice.

Last night, I had a similar experience, but it pertains to this blog. No kidding -- at 4:30 a.m., I woke up with thoughts of Century typefaces dancing in my head. Why, you ask? Well, just as commenter Warren T., who beat me to my own punch, correctly points out, "Century is not an odd choice because it is the same font required by the Rule 33.1(b) of the United States Supreme Court." Which, for some reason, popped into my brain in the middle of the night and woke me out of dead sleep.

Why hadn't I remembered that as I waxed so poetically in yesterday's post about various fonts? I have no clue, really. Perhaps it's because I can't think of a single moot court competition out there that, despite setting its problem in the U.S. Supreme Court, actually requires you to make your brief look like a SCOTUS brief. Perhaps it's because just last week I was discussing the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure (which apply to all the federal circuit courts) with my Appellate Advocacy class, and those rules require that briefs be "set in a plain, roman style." Perhaps it's because I was so puzzled at the choice to go with Arial five years ago that I just assumed whoever re-wrote the rules this time went with their own personal favorite.

Regardless of the reason, I'm a moron for not catching it. And hats off to the New York City Bar Association, for being the only competition I can think of to mandate that a fake SCOTUS brief actually resemble a real SCOTUS brief. Of course, real SCOTUS briefs are little booklets -- 6 1/8 inch by 9 1/4 and bound like a pamphlet -- and not 8 1/2 by 11 inch papers bound spirally. But producing those little booklets costs lots of money, which law schools and law students don't have much of these days. So, while it may not look exactly the same, it'll be close, and there's nothing wrong with that.

In any event, I'm glad to see the Century family move into town. I suspect they'll be here a while...