Drafting Smarter Documents

The days of drafting dead documents is done. Legal audiences like judges and clients constantly report that they now read legal documents on digital devices. And reading on digital is not like reading paper. There are several things you can do to draft like a modern-day writer. 

First, draft documents for busy readers who want to be able to skip around to different sections quickly.

How? Headings and hyperlinks. 

Digital readers should be able to pop open the table of contents in any part of the document and quickly click around to different sections. There’s no need to pretend folks will be flipping through pages to get around. They won’t. So use more headings and subheadings so people can instantly find whatever topic they want to jump to. And make sure headings are self-explanatory.

Those headings will do a lot more than they used to. 

Once you add more headings and subheadings, make sure your document format makes it simple to navigate between them. A Microsoft Word document has a built-in navigation pane that will work so long as your reader uses it. But if you’re sending your document as a PDF, you’ll want to add two things: links to the table of contents (so that readers will be transported to the section in a click and not have to use the page numbers) and an easy way to return to the table of contents from each page. 

Next, link your document up! This means adding links to every related document or external source that your readers may want to check out while reading your document. 

There are three main links that matter: Internal cross-references, exhibits, and URLs. 

First, like headings, you can insert internal links to any relevant part of your document. Say that you are explaining a battery claim and that one relevant point is whether the plaintiff suffered harm—and you already addressed this same harm point in another section covering a different claim. You can insert an internal link (a cross-reference) in your battery section so that readers can jump back to the harm section if they want a refresher on that relevant point. 

Next, you can link to any related documents that you are attaching to your main document. Let’s say you are writing a memo about the same battery claim and plan to attach some pictures of the medical bills to support the harm element. You can insert links that will bring your reader directly to those other documents. This is easiest to do by preparing all of your documents or images as pdfs—because PDFs have a feature that allows you to easily link between separate documents. 

Finally, you should link your readers to any external web addresses that may be helpful. This is especially useful when linking to court decisions, websites, or anything else on the web. This way, readers can jump right to a court decision wherever you cite it in your document. Just make sure to include links to free open sources (or at least to the two major research databases: Lexis and Westlaw). 

Crafting 21st-century documents doesn’t stop with these fundamentals. There are tons of tools that can help you add more functionality to documents for readers. And you can come up with new ones, too. Just make sure that when you are adding functionality to documents you heavily test the features and ensure your readers will not get frustrated.