Ballpark, what would you say your time to words ratio is in an oral argument outline? (As in X number of words for 45 minutes of time for your side)

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Lol. I'd focus less on this and more on making your elevator pitch as focused as possible.

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I can’t get into specifics but this isn’t an “elevator pitch” situation. It’s inevitably going to be a marathon oral argument unfortunately (the court has allocated double the usual time based on submissions and there are only two parties). Most arguments I’ve previously done have been short and focused (discovery, one of many defendants, or appeals), and I prepared responses to questions etc in case asked but kept it short. Here I anticipate needing to use most of my time but I don’t want to overshoot and obviously need to reserve time to respond to the other side and questions from the bench.

I find that I speak about 2-5 minutes per outline page, the high end is when I use a high-level outline on a topic I'm expert in and less when I'm almost reading it. I think the number is that most people read about 120-150 words a minute if you are using a detailed outline.

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Don’t think of time/word ratio, think of it in time/idea ratio. Keying yourself to words, even in outline form, risks being unhelpfully rigid and could really backfire. I plan in terms of main points and about how much time comparatively I’d like to spend on each, as well as predictable questions/tangents I think the court will go on and ways to pivot out of those and back to my main themes as quickly as possible.

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If you can't boil your argument down to three specific reasons your side should win and then flush them out in simple terms you're going to lose the judges in the weeds anyway.

It’s not that kind of a hearing. You’re just going to have to believe me on that.

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