Beverly Ray Burlingame, On Beginning a Court Paper November 2003

In drafting court papers, litigators routinely waste their openers by repeating, more or less verbatim, the very words of the title, which often consists of four or more lines of verbosity. This peculiar habit has led Kevin McDonald, a Washington, D.C. lawyer, to coin the phrase ‘‘hence the title’’—the remark that a judge might make after slogging through an opening. To read the article, please click here.