Avoid Attorneys Fees

It's very common to find court filings which use the term, "attorneys fees". Both "attorney's fees'" and "attorneys' fees" are acceptable, and there is some debate about which is preferred. See this post by Bryan Garner, in which he recommends "attorney's fees" as the better alternative.

For whatever reason, lawyers will commonly drop the apostrophe in this phrase, even though it would be hard to imagine failing to select the possessive form in most other phrases. See these examples:

NYSCEF Doc. No. 40, Defendant’s Memorandum Of Law In Opposition To Plaintiff’s Motion For Summary Judgment And In Support Of Defendant’s Cross Motion To Dismiss The Complaint, at 19, MEPT 757 Third Avenue LLC v. Hayim Grant, Index No. 653267/2020 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Feb. 5, 2021), available at: https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=savtrt5UiETqLKmyJlsLQw==&system=prod

NYSCEF Doc. No. 25, Defendants’ Memorandum Of Law In Opposition To Plaintiff’s Motion For Summary Judgment, at 2, Atlantic Specialty Insurance Co. v. Party City Corp.., Index No. 652075/2020 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. Oct. 7, 2020), available at: https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=R10dYX1Lp1fF3dIuCab_PLUS_Qw==&system=prod

Correcting a mistake like this in a brief will undoubtedly win you credit with lawyers for whom attorney's fees are what it's all about.

Object to, Admit, and Authenticate Evidence on the Move

There's a great smartphone app called Federal Evidence Applied, available for download here for the iPhone: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/federal-evidence-applied/id1232973956 , for $1.99, which is a great tool to have in the courtroom. The app is from David Shroyer, who is apparently a private developer, but it gives every sign of being extremely well thought-out. It is designed to take you through the steps of objecting to, admitting or authenticating evidence in a federal trial, through a series of guided menus. You can select a type of evidence:

. . . answer questions with respect to the nature of this evidence:

. . . and ultimately conclude in a green or red screen which indicates if the evidence can come in.

After questions concerning the admissibility of a police report . . .

. . . the user will be prompted run an authentication screen:

. . . in order to show what must be done to verify that a document is genuine.

An additional screen can then be run to check to see if the document satisfies the Best Evidence Rule.

Additional automated screens are available for competency; relevancy; prejudicial impact; hearsay; confirming the form of a question by an attorney is appropriate; different types of evidence (such as deposition or judicial notice of some fact); and when a court can make a preliminary determination on admissibility.

A separate guided menu is available to check to see what needs to be done to lay the ground for an objection to the admission of evidence.

The app also includes the text of the Federal Rules of Evidence.

Assuming you can get permission to bring your phone into a courtroom, this is a great tool to quickly help an attorney look up the steps she needs to follow to get evidence in, or keep it out.

Google Docs Better At Checking Grammar Than MS Word

For a while now, I've been noticing that Google Docs and Gmail do a much better job at detecting grammatical errors than MS Word does. Here are some examples:

Google Docs found this typo:

. . . but MS Word did not:

Gmail flagged this error:

. . . but MS Word missed it.

It must be very uncommon for attorneys to review briefs in anything other than MS Word. Check a brief that you've been asked to cite check in Google Docs, and it may help you find some typos that the lawyers have missed.