Pictures in briefs

Can you put a picture in a legal brief? If the brief is for a U.S. Court of Appeals, you sure can. Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 32(a)(1)(C) allows photographs, illustrations, and tables to be reproduced in a brief by any method resulting in a good copy of the original.

How do you insert a photograph into a brief? In Word, move the blinking vertical line* to the place you want to insert the photograph. Then click Insert on the menu bar, move your pointer to Picture in the drop-down menu, and follow your nose. Once the photograph is inserted in the brief, right-click on the photo and select Show Picture Toolbar from the little menu. You’ll then get a little toolbar that you can use to edit the photo.

Legal Writing Prof Blog has a nice post today with links to two trial-court briefs incorporating photos. And here is an excerpt from a brief I wrote a few years back, using a photograph illustrate the client's product.

__________

* I have no idea what the correct term is for that vertical blinking line.

Comments

[Damien]

Good post. The "blinking vertical line" is a cursor.

[Ray]

Thanks, Damien. Until a few minutes ago, I thought that a cursor had to be a blinking underline thing (like I used to see in my COBOL and DOS days), and that there was another word for the vertical-line blinky. But Oxford American Dictionary backs you up, defining “cursor” as “a movable indicator on a computer screen identifying the point that will be affected by input from the user, for example showing where typed text will be inserted.” So “cursor” it is.