Last summer, one of our companion publications reported an academic study of how each of the 13 federal courts of appeals format their slip opinions. (A slip opinion is the opinion initially released by a court, before it is combined with other opinions and paginated into the bound volumes of official reports that lawyers routinely cite.)

The study found significant variation among slip opinions: in font, text size, line spacing, and page margins. It concluded that, although there’s no perfect format, wide margins and smaller line spacing tend to improve readability. And that’s important — according to the study’s author, University of Virginia law professor Joe Fore — because “[t]he instantaneous nature of social media means people are sharing slip opinions much more often than they did in the past.” It is the slip opinion, after all, that courts post on their websites and that the most eager readers, court-watchers, and journalists will encounter and dissect.