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Comment by okasaki | Hacker News Reader

Is there some reason why this kind of stuff is typed up on a typwriter?

Various legal systems have standards for the form for which documents should be submitted to them which are surprisingly nitpicky in terms of items like fonts and spacing. Of course, these standards were created when typewriters were the dominant use case, so had deference to what typewriters could actually do. Even though most of the typewriter use has fallen out of fashion, the standards remain, with the results that the documents look like they came out of a typewriter even if (as I suspect in this case) it's just been printed then faxed.

At this point it also probably makes it easier for law-specific OCR software to round up the standard metadata. With the sheer volume of paperwork in that industry, nobody is interested in reinventing the regex wheel for every document.

Not to mention the real cost of every person reading each document having to relearn how this document is laid out vs every other document. There is a non-trivial human cost to not having a standard document format. Even if it is old and crusty.

Also looks like most courts have a style guide for you to follow: https://www.jud.ct.gov/Publications/Manual_of_style.pdf

Doesn't explain why they'd never get with the time and accept electronic submissions, which are probably easier on their end too.

Federal courts accept (and often have rules requiring-by-default, for most purpose) electronic submission.

And you didn’t feel the need to mention that in your reply to the parent comment, that introduced this assumption that I was building off of?

Electronic submission still involves uploading a PDF, which has to follow the court's rules for layout of printed pages.

It just means it the file gets directly added into the case's docket, rather than having to be manually scanned in by the clerks' office.

You'd think by using electronic submission they'd go with machine readable format.

That would be a lot more work (because of the need to accept exceptional paper submissions, and get them into the required format) and cost for both the courts and every law office that might have need to file in federal court, for potentially very little benefit, since the processes filings support are human processes for the foreseeable future, independently of the data format.

Also it makes things more equal. Like appellant courts can tell only x number of pages. And for that sort of limit to make sense the line spacing, font size and margins need to be consistent. With only set of fonts allowed.

Courts really don't want to argue about how any submission is laid out and in best case they get to just throw out something looking wrong saving their time.

Consistency also means that rules that state “pages” are meaningful limits, not something subject to unresitricted gaming, and that they retain that over time.

Also a method my high school English teacher used to standardise pages after one too many (i.e. one) comic sans 18pt hand ins.

We could use a computer at a certain font, linespace and margin so a 10 page essay was consistent.

Which was lots better than other teachers who just said ‘nope, handwritten please’.

> Also a method my high school English teacher used to standardise pages after one too many (i.e. one) comic sans 18pt hand ins.

Yeah, exactly. The courts are more worried about Helvetica Narrow 6 than Comic Sans 18; flip side of the same coin, since they tend to have upper rather than lower bounds.

There's definitely a fax machine at some point in this document's journey.

Scanner probably, to capture the signatures and the clerk's stamp on the front page.

Yes! Also, why do they feel the need to do the "a/k/a SBF" after every mention of the guy's name? Say it the first time then just call him SBF thereafter. I think Typewriter Guy must be paid by the character. Another petty thing: I've never seek "a/k/a" with slashes like that before -- "aka" is sanctioned by Merriam-Webster, and "a.k.a." is also acceptable for constipated purists and The New Yorker.

Probably an 80's kid. I remember writing a/k/a like that and I distinctly remember running essays through a character counter and adding filler words.

> never seek "a/k/a" with slashes like that before

F/k/a is also common. I only see it in legal and compliance contexts.

Seems to be standard in those type of documents, e.g. https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/usao-sdny/legacy...

There's some discussion at https://typographyforlawyers.com/ about the current state of things, rules and requirements, and how to improve things.

This was my exact thoughts too! surely human beings from the 21st century could have improved on this.

However I'm also pretty sure that lawyers have found a loophole to prevent their jobs from being automated, if you just make using technology illegal/"not to standard" then they can keep billing $500 per hour to use a typewriter

You think lawyers personally are the ones writing documents?

FYI whoever down voted this, no they generally don't. They have staff they pay to do that and they look docs over before signing them. That is when they aren't using generic templates that the paralegals just fill out

Rules vary somewhat by locale, but in general:

https://www.insd.uscourts.gov/sites/insd/files/local_rules/L...

There is a method to the madness. Double spacing allows for manual markup and edits, for example.

It’s not typed up on a typewriter, although it may appear that way. Back when I worked in a federal district court, we used WordPerfect on Windows to draft judicial documents using a standard template that looked much like this; I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re still using it today.

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