Tips on writing the summary of the argument

If you’re writing a brief for a Louisiana court of appeal or the U.S. Fifth Circuit, you must include a summary of the argument. The same goes for a writ application to the Louisiana Supreme Court. But the rules offer little guidance on how to write the summary except to make it “succinct,” “clear,” and “accurate,” and to avoid merely repeating the argument’s point headings.

If you’re looking for tips on how to write the summary of the argument, you may be interested in Judith Fischer’s article on that topic, Summing It Up with Panache: Framing a Brief’s Summary of the Argument, which you can download on SSRN. In her article, Fischer examines the competing summaries of arguments from the briefs in 20 U.S. Supreme Court cases, analyzing the techniques used by the briefwriters to grab the Court’s attention.