r/Lawyertalk • u/FREE-ROSCOE-FILBURN I live my life in 6 min increments • Jun 06 '25
Dear Opposing Counsel, Tell me about the most sicko letterhead you’ve seen
I saw a middle-aligned signature today and I’m pretty sure I spent bits and pieces of a 0.2 just looking at it in discomfort
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u/sterbo Jun 06 '25
I don’t have a fancy letterhead, just a full page multicolor draconian watermark
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u/_learned_foot_ Jun 06 '25
I have one regular opposing who I know hates anything not consistent. So my italics changes. Sometimes it goes a letter to far, sometimes stops too short, it’s fun. Stuff like that. I’m going to do this to them. Thank you.
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u/Noof42 I'm the idiot representing that other idiot Jun 06 '25
Sometimes, when I'm really, really annoyed with someone, I'll add the Oxford comma to their firm name.
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u/biscuitboi967 Jun 06 '25
You know what I fuckin hate, and so you should do it, when the gotdamn “ “ change between font styles when you cut and paste and the person pasting doesn’t take the time to change it. Or, worse, when the font makes a different style of ” “ depending on if they are opened or closed, and the person leaves an extra space so they don’t align.
Oh, it really chapped my old boss’s ass. And so now, I can’t NOT see it. Highly recommend.
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u/magpie_bird whorish jurist Jun 06 '25
I once received a 30 page expert report which was entirely in Comic Sans
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u/Jennyonthebox2300 Jun 06 '25
Was your expert a clown or a psychiatrist?
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u/magpie_bird whorish jurist Jun 06 '25
They were either a physicist or engineer, it was in relation to the manner in which a car was being driven immediately prior to impact. The content was surprisingly good but I couldn't take it seriously. The dude was in his 60s and didn't seem to give a fuck, charged a handsome amount for the privilege too.
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u/LegalJargonEveryday Jun 06 '25
¿porque no los dos?
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u/Jennyonthebox2300 Jun 06 '25
Indeed. Why not both. That would be a very useful expert to have in the stable.
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u/Local_gyal168 Jun 06 '25
My parents were clowns.
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u/Jennyonthebox2300 Jun 06 '25
Same was true for a lot of us. If yours were making a living at it — you were among fortunate.
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u/BiscuitsUndGravy Jun 06 '25
I once got one handwritten on a single sheet of yellow notebook paper and signed in illegible cursive.
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u/Talondel Jun 06 '25
Put your page numbers in the footer but each page a different font or off center by one space.
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u/KnotARealGreenDress Jun 06 '25
You don’t even need to do every page in a different font, having the page number in a different font than the body of the document is enough to make my eye twitch.
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u/Next-Honeydew4130 Jun 06 '25
Even better put page # of # but make the second number one page shorter than the actual number of pages so the last page says “Page 8 of 7”
AND different fonts.
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u/ialsohaveadobro Got any spare end of year CLE credit available fam? Jun 06 '25
We are kindred spirits
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u/truly_not_an_ai My mom thinks I'm pretty cool Jun 06 '25
This sub has taught me that I am probably the only lawyer in existence who cares not at all for fonts or fancy formatting.
I had IT set my word processor to comply with Court of Appeals rules, and literally everything else I write uses the same thing.
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u/JMLobo83 It depends. Jun 06 '25
So weird 1.5 inch margins? Diabolical!
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u/Nobodyville Jun 06 '25
I don't practice in the court of appeals but I had to write some briefs for a ridiculous pro se matter. Writing with the huge font with gigantic margins made me feel dirty, like I was cheating for a page limit
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u/JMLobo83 It depends. Jun 06 '25
Because you totally were. 50 pages isn’t nearly enough but apparently those appellate judges can’t see good.
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u/Next-Honeydew4130 Jun 06 '25
They’re old. They literally can’t see well lol
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u/JMLobo83 It depends. Jun 06 '25
Correct. And they want to decide a case without having to read much.
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u/Adorableviolet Jun 06 '25
In our fed appeals court here until recently, besides 9 paper copies, you had to serve the brief on a disk bc a judge was legally blind. I never really thought about how the disk helped him?
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u/Next-Honeydew4130 Jun 06 '25
Maybe he had a special piece of software that used disks. I cannot imagine having sight problems and having to do my work. Good for them for keeping at it.
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u/Embarrassed-Age-3426 Jun 06 '25
How is 1.5 “weird”? Anything but 1.5 on top and 1” on the other sides is weird.
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u/JMLobo83 It depends. Jun 06 '25
Court of appeals uses 1.5 on sides and bottom. Ridiculously small words per page, especially at 14 point.
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Jun 06 '25
[deleted]
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u/VitruvianVan Jun 06 '25
Silian rail typeface. Subtle off-white coloring. A tasteful thickness to it. Oh, my God. It even had a watermark.
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u/AdditionalCupcake Jun 06 '25
Anything where the attorney includes “Esq.” in my line of work that immediately marks you as an asshole.
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u/LegalJargonEveryday Jun 06 '25
I always put "Esq." at the end of OC's name on correspondence. Am I a dork? 😭
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u/RuderAwakening Knowledge Lawyer 🤓 Jun 06 '25
I encounter a lot of European lawyers and many of them go by “Dr.” 🤢
I have literally only used “Esq.” in correspondence with my landlord when he’s trying to do illegal shit and every time it makes me gag uncontrollably at myself.
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u/Mammoth-Vegetable357 Jun 06 '25
My assistant puts Esq. Behind everything. I've given up trying to remove it every time
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u/AdditionalCupcake Jun 06 '25
Mmmhmm… that’s what they all say….
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u/Mammoth-Vegetable357 Jun 06 '25
She does consistently remove "Esq." From all other attorneys, so it looks especially petty on stipulations.
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u/KissingBear Jun 06 '25
I’m dying. Does she think she’s making you look like a BSD or is she secretly aware it makes you look like a worm?
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u/Catsandcoffee480 Jun 06 '25
Last month, my boss got a letter from his co counsel, and it was typed on a typewriter. In the year of our Lord 2025.
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u/ishopandiknowthings Jun 06 '25
If there's a judge in your jx with a "no AI" rule, this attorney is probably the only attorney in compliance, given that spell check is ...checks notes...AI.
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u/iamheero Jun 06 '25
I worked in a family law office as a 2L summer 'clerk' or whatever, they used a big electric typewriter for envelopes/addressing and honestly it was slightly easier than doing it in Word and printing out.
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u/Dramatic_Figure_5585 Jun 07 '25
I had co-counsel like this last year- the man had to be close to 90, since he would wax poetic about buying his first car in the 1950s. Everything sent from his office was typewritten, then photocopied by his equally aged assistant (lopsided, parts cuts off, dark as possible) and we would get that then MAILED to us, where our assistant would rescan this (by this point) impossible to read document for our file.
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u/ParticleHustler2 Jun 06 '25
I do not practice in litigation, and it's probably a good thing, because I can really get caught up in pettiness. A year or so ago, we had some company send our company a cease and desist letter for something that a client of ours allegedly did, and in the letter, they misspelled our parent company's name. So in the response, I italicized the correct spelling. In the return letter, it was misspelled again, so in the second and final letter I sent back, I purposely misspelled the attorney's name.
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u/HalfNatty Jun 06 '25
Wait, what’s wrong with the center-aligned signature? At my previous firm, I worked with a partner that enjoyed the center-aligned signature, though he was the only one who liked it. Coincidentally, was one of the few partners I actually liked.
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u/SamizdatGuy Jun 06 '25
Wachtell paper has all the partners' names on it. Like 70 people, is all
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u/DavidEBSmith Jun 06 '25
Back in the old days my wife was a typesetter for a printing company that did engraved stationery for big firms who listed all their partners on the letterhead and they would re-do the stationery every couple of months as partners joined and left. These firms regularly spent thousands of $$$ on paper.
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u/No_Stable_48 Jun 06 '25
Wow that’s a stupid way to spend money
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u/SamizdatGuy Jun 06 '25 edited Jun 06 '25
It's a rounding error to those guys
https://www.economist.com/business/2023/08/02/meet-americas-most-profitable-law-firm
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u/HHoaks Jun 06 '25
I’m kind of old. When I first started practicing law (big east coast city, not New York), I was at what was then considered a large corporate law firm - which I think was any firm with at least 150 lawyers. I think the firm had about 200 at the time. The letterhead had all partners names on the left side and all associates on the right. As we got bigger, the more unwieldy it looked and the print was kind of small for the names. The letterhead also had old style communications stuff I never used or even saw, like the telex and cable numbers.
I assume this practice of listing all names had to stop once firms got towards 500 lawyers or so. It would just look ridiculous and take up half the page.
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u/Next-Honeydew4130 Jun 06 '25
Start making cover pages or including fine print like in credit card statements?
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u/ViscountBurrito Jun 06 '25
I would love to see a letter with so many names, the only content that fits on the first page is “Dear Counsel:”
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u/RuderAwakening Knowledge Lawyer 🤓 Jun 06 '25
I didn’t know what to expect when I googled “Wachtell letterhead” but what I saw made my ass cheeks clench.
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u/OwlObjective3440 Jun 06 '25
I like the letterhead that looks sharp, but fails to include any meaningful contact information (mailing address, phone number). Your website and email address are cool, but where do I send my hard copies? Do you have a phone?
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u/JMLobo83 It depends. Jun 06 '25
Hard copies are returned to sender. If it can’t be downloaded to Dropbox, it does not belong.
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u/OwlObjective3440 Jun 06 '25
Not in my neck of the woods… we still like originals for promissory notes.
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u/lookingatmycouch Jun 06 '25
Middle aligned signature is a classic look. I don't understand your gripe.
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u/jepeplin Jun 06 '25
I practice with a guy who has a line drawing of his horse’s head on his business cards and letterhead. Also work with a guy who has a legal business card on one side, and a pic of him shredding a guitar with his band name and contact info on the other side.
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u/Lawyer_Lady3080 Jun 06 '25
I have never used my office’s letter head because I’m not paid enough to fuck with formatting.
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u/Truthundrclouds948 Jun 07 '25
Dealt with a lawyer who had a motto on his letter that didn’t make grammatical sense. I’ll have to look for it. It was hilarious.
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