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Honestly this is something I've thought about alot. I clerked at the district Court level and while good briefs made my job alot easier, I often felt like the briefs didn't matter because I would essentially just do everything from scratch. The briefs were mostly helpful for their facts sections. Now that I'm back in practice I am slightly depressed how much time is spent wordsmithing and making tiny changes that are not completely irrelevant to the eventual outcome.
Don’t federal courts put more resources into the effort? I don’t think most state courts do everything from scratch when evaluating a motion and may rely more on the briefs.
All I know is they don’t matter near as much as the in-house counsels littering my papers with irrelevant commentary in track changes seem to think it does.
I think it depends on the type of case, the venue, and other circumstances. The writing seems to matter more in federal court than state court in my experience. Sometimes good motions or briefs can preserve issues for appeal or narrow down the parties or scope of claims and give you an advantage later during discovery (and hence at trial or when it comes time to settle the case). Remember, the end goal is to add value for your client. That doesn’t always mean getting a verdict or an outright dismissal. You do what you have to do to get the best deal by winning as many of the small battles in the war as you can sometimes.
Sometimes the more obstacles you throw at a plaintiff and the harder you fight, and the more prepared snd capable you are, the more likely it is that they’ll settle for less than what they wanted, or they’ll foolishly charge into trial out of greed and lose because you are better prepared and postured, or because you have protected the record well.
But other times it’s just pissing in the wind, and an exercise in futility - Fighting battles you know you’re not going to win or derive a real benefit from just isn’t helpful. Or sometimes you are just in a crappy state court venue and nothing is going to go your way. No matter how crappy the other side is, they keep their case alive and it doesn’t even matter what you file. So you may as well just not file certain motions and avoid telegraphing your positions. You may as well just lay as low as possible, protect the record and try to win at trial.
Other times your case just sucks and you have to cut a deal without wasting time and money.
There’s no right or wrong overarching answer because it just depends. But either way, it’s work and gets you a paycheck.
I think you need to how your court and judge functions and what types of motions are successful. For example, you can have the best written demurrer. But a California state judge is unlikely to grant the motion with prejudice, especially in particular types of cases.
You also need to define success. Sometimes the purpose of the motion is educating a judge. Sometimes it’s to narrow the focus of trial. Remove damage issues. I think on all of these fronts, good briefs matter.
Briefs are for the appellate court. Lots of trial judges don’t read them. They’ll have their clerks read them and then summarize the arguments for them. You should still submit good briefs, but be prepared to educate your judge at oral argument as much as possible. If you get the sense your judge doesn’t read the briefs, ALWAYS ask for oral argument.
As a former clerk, I agree with what A1 and C1 both said. A well written brief made life easier. But I don’t think a well written brief will “win” the brief especially at the district court level. I will say that a poorly written brief can cost a party. This is because poorly written briefs are often accompanied by poor arguments. Additionally, if you fail to tie the argument to the facts and the facts are unclear, the court could miss a fact the party needs to prove. And a court is not obligated to search the record for facts.
Now that I practice, I do nitpick the minor details of my briefs. But I don’t do so because I worry about the court seeing a little error. Small mistakes are likely to be ignored or missed by the Court. But I strive to catch all the little mistakes because I find that if I and my staff are engaged at the level that we’re catching the little mistakes, then we’re much less likely to make larger mistakes. If I’m not focusing on the little mistakes, then I find me and my staff making bigger mistakes. So I think there’s a benefit to focusing on the little things, even if that benefit isn’t in Court.
I find judges are just as biased as any normal person and will rule based on those biases no matter how good the brief. What is most frustrating, though, is their opinions sometimes make it abundantly clear they didn’t read the brief and didn’t even care and restate the law incorrectly. I have a bunch of respect for judges in that they can become very knowledgeable in all areas of law, something I could never do. But when they get a brief from a lawyer who has practiced solely on that area their entire career, you would think they would take the time to read what that lawyer has to say, because as smart as that judge is, the lawyer probably knows more about the law in that case than the judge. But they don’t even bother and just write their opinion based on what they think the law says.
I clerked at a state trial court and the written submissions from attorneys were beyond helpful because I didn’t sit in on the trials and hearings (assigned to multiple judges at a time) so I needed the background info. Plus, half the judges told me what they wanted the end result to be and I created the decisions to back them up while the other half left it up to me to write the judgments and memos deciding a case. While there was no one memo/post-trial submission that won the case, I can say that the credibility of one side can be helped by well-written pleadings.
Judges can be unpredictable, and I find the vast majority are decent people who were good lawyers. However many trial courts have district judges field a variety of cases beyond what they practiced, so the judges sometimes don’t wholly understand the complexity of issues in front of them (I.e. a judge who only ever worked as a prosecutor presiding over a qui tam case or a products liability class action). Thus, judges who are not well versed on some areas of law will sometimes pick the winner of an issue based on who has the simpler explanation and/or more digestible writing, even if that explanation isn’t painting the whole picture of an area of law or accurately applying the law. Or, if they are unsure about an issue, they will often rule in the manner least likely to be flipped on appeal.