Criminal Defense Editing and Proofreading Services

A sentencing memorandum is read late, usually after everything else on the docket, by someone who already has the presentence report and the guideline calculation. It is the one document in the file written to be persuasive rather than procedural, and it is read at the end of a long day. Whether it works has a great deal to do with whether the reader can find, in the first page, what is being asked for and why.

Sentencing memoranda and appellate briefs make up most of the criminal defense work that reaches us. Motions and supporting memoranda arrive with them, particularly motions to suppress, along with bail and release proposals. Chronologies, disclosure summaries, character reference letters, and the exhibit indexes that hold a record together come through the same files. Release proposals are written against the factors in 18 U.S.C. 3142, which the court weighs in deciding conditions of release.¹

Appellate briefs are written under rules that are unusually specific about form, and the rules are worth reading as drafting instructions. Rule 28(a) of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure requires a brief to contain, "under appropriate headings and in the order indicated", a disclosure statement, a table of contents with page references, a table of authorities with references to the pages where each is cited, and the sections that follow them.² Rule 32 sets the outside limits: a principal brief may not exceed 30 pages unless it complies with the type-volume limitation, and a principal brief is acceptable if it "contains no more than 13,000 words", with a reply brief held to half of that.³ A brief that runs long is not weak because of its length. It is at risk because a court can refuse to file it, and because the work of cutting it under deadline is done worse than the work of writing it to length in the first place.

Cutting to a word limit is ordinary editorial work and it is the request we see most often in this area. The reductions that hurt least come from the same places every time: a statement of facts that narrates the record rather than selecting from it, string citations doing the work one authority would do, argument headings written as labels instead of as propositions, and the passage restating the standard of review at a length no judge needs. What we do not do is decide which argument goes. Where a brief cannot reach the limit without losing a ground, the options come back with the count attached to each and counsel chooses.

The table of authorities is where errors survive longest, because it is compiled last and checked least. Every case cited in the brief has to appear in it, at every page where it is cited, and the page numbers move each time a paragraph is added. Record citations behave the same way and matter more: an appellate court reading a factual assertion follows the citation to the record, and a citation pointing at the wrong page is worse than no citation, because it looks like the record does not support the claim. Checking each one against the record and against the index is mechanical and slow, and it is the part most often skipped when a filing deadline is close.

Sentencing memoranda are structured around a statute rather than around a story, and the structure is available to be used. The court is directed to consider "the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and characteristics of the defendant", along with the need for the sentence to reflect the seriousness of the offense, to afford deterrence, and to provide the defendant with needed treatment.⁴ A memorandum organized around those factors is easier to answer and easier to grant than one organized as a life story with the factors implied. The material is almost always already there. It is in the wrong order, and the sentence a judge is being asked to impose is often on page eleven rather than page one.

Tone does more damage here than anywhere else we work. Overstatement in a criminal filing is read as a signal about the strength of what it decorates, and adjectives attached to the government's conduct tend to draw attention away from the conduct itself. The same is true in reverse of character reference letters, which arrive written by people who have never written one: they say the person is a good person at length and describe nothing the writer has actually seen. The useful version of that letter is shorter, dated, and specific about what the writer knows first-hand. Editing it does not change the writer's voice, and should not; it removes the parts that could have been written by anyone about anyone.

We do not practice law and we do not touch the substance. Which ground to argue, what sentence to seek, what to concede, whether a motion lies, and what a record will bear are decisions for counsel and the client, and they arrive made. We do not add a fact, strengthen a characterization, or resolve a discrepancy between two documents by choosing one. Where a date, a name, or an exhibit number differs between the chronology and the record, both are set out and counsel settles which is right.

Everything sent to us is confidential, including material subject to a protective order, unfiled drafts, and documents naming complainants, witnesses, and children.