Modern serif typeface for a law firm

[marcinpetrus]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Hi.

What serif typeface would you recomend for a law firm corporate identity?
I'm looking for something very modern but with a lot of human touch.

thanks

[gtrianta]

I would suggest Dolly from Underware.

George Triantafyllakos - backpacker.gr

[poms]

Or
Fedra Serif A (or Fedra Serif B). And a matching sans is available too, if you need it, Fedra Sans.
http://www.typotheque.com/fonts/fedra_serif_a/

[typerighter]

Have you thought about FF Absara?

[typerighter]

Yes, Fedra is a better suggestion.

[mondoB]

ITC Stone Serif with oldstyle figures (from ITC, not Adobe) is a tremendous workhorse that blooms at 9pt, whereas others mentioned here bloom more at 10pt. And it's very crisp, fairly high contrast, with a large x-height, available in three weights. Dolly, Absara, and Fedra are way too informal, even cute. Stone Serif (use its matching Stone Sans as a sidebar) is just right for a law firm, even aggressively right. Or, Warnock Pro from Adobe.

[poms]

>I’m looking for something very modern but with a lot of human touch.

@MondoB
This says to me marcinpetrus is searching for s.th. "cute" that could work properly for running text. Dolly and Fedra are in that grid in my opinion. Stone Serif and Warnock not.

What is just right for a law firm? Maybe this is the difference between european and american style preferences – to be polemic; Netherlands vs Engravers MT.

And Fedra is huge. It contains additionally cyrillic, CE and all the stuff marcinpetrus maybe needs, the guy is from poland.

[mondoB]

Dolly has only two weights, and no bold italic, whereas Fedra Serif and Absara are fully equipped. Here in New York, however, those options would never stand a chance with the client, whatever the designer thought of them. They would work for a non-profit agency, though, and for those clients I have used all three at different times.

[Zivatar]

Any font for all-purpose law firm use absolutely, positively needs lining figures, not old style figures, as the default, not merely accessible via opentype advanced features. Any law firm needs a font that will work with Microsoft Word or WordPerfect, instead of requiring InDesign. That means that Dolly and Fedra are out. They're both too unusual, anyway, and there's something not quite right about Dolly's bold.

Stone Serif might work, but I'm not familiar enough with it. Linotype Sabon is ok. Monotype Sabon is too light. Sabon Next and Le Monde Livre are in general very good, but Porchez likes weird pilcrows (Paragraph signs) for some unknown reason, and that might be a dealbreaker for LML and SN (SN has good pilcrows, but only in its small cap set). Linotype Sabon is a little bit too light, but is good otherwise. SN and LML are just about a perfect darkness for law firm use. Abrams Augereau is also very good, but also has a problem with the pilcrow. What's with these weird pilcrows in Garamond revivals, anyway?

You may think that it's odd for me to be so concerned with the pilcrow (paragraph sign), but whereas, in general, it's little used, in legal work it's used a lot (although that varies with the type of law practice)

Palatino is quite decent, but it may be too common for branding purposes. Or not. 99% of law firms use Times New Roman or similar, and nothing else. Lawyers don't normally ever see Palatino. And it has a nice, conventional pilcrow.

A law firm will almost never use anything as small as 9 point, except maybe in parts of contracts intentionally aimed at being hard to read.

Miller, Escrow, and assorted variants of Century are quite good, IMO, but may seem too old-fashioned for someone who wants something "very modern."

Meridien is good, except the regular is a little bit too light, and the medium a little bit too dark (and not a big enough contrast with the bold).

I'd be inclined to recommend going with Palatino. It's quite good for many uses, and has the advantage of being "free."

Kingfisher would be a really good choice, but Tankard made the default figures old style. You need opentype advanced features to get at the lining figures, so most law firms wouldn't be able to. Grrrrr!

[OlafElexander]

As a lawyer and typefreak I started the quest for the real law font as well (maybe a task for highly appreciated Tobias F.?).

After tons of printouts etc I'm still not sure which font to use. Minion has a very professional look, but screams boring at the same time...and I would like to add a bit more modern touch as well.

I love the Scala Sans, but the serif in the family not too much.

H&FJ has really great fonts like Mercury or Gotham, but they just not seem right somehow for our profession.

Until now I have the following fonts in my shortlist to consider:

Scala Sans
DTL Documenta
Quadraat
Sabon
Verdana (looks surprisingly good sometimes)
Whitney
Corpid
Stone Sans/Serif
Syntax
Alber
Kievit

oops... I guess the shortlist is not that short after all... ;)

[marcinpetrus]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Fedra is what I was looking for - modern but with human touch.

I was also thinking about Eva and Fresco from Our Type.

[The Don Killuminati]

Fedra is definitely nice. I'm somewhat relieved to see Quadraat on OlafElexander's list; several years ago I used it for a legal identity and I think it has been holding up quite nicely. But these days I think I would be much more inclined toward Stone. It's just the perfect temperature.

[rs_donsata]

When I read modern in your post I tought modern as Century or Torino.

Héctor

[initram5]

Very great topic. As a lawyer now I use Palatino font. I find it stylish, elegant, readable and much better than the boring TN Roman. Although something more unique and masculine font - Fedra or Quadraat - would be maybe even better.

[Nick Shinn]

positively needs lining figures, not old style figures, as the default

Why?

[EK]

Because of text like this:

However, in Pushpanathan v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 1998 CanLII 778 (S.C.C.), [1998] 1 S.C.R. 982, at para. 25, this Court held that s. 83(1) does not require that the Court of Appeal address only the stated question and issues related to it

or this:

Some Canadian courts have imposed, in certain circumstances, a common law obligation on administrative decision-makers to provide reasons, while others have been more reluctant. In Orlowski v. British Columbia (Attorney-General) 1992 CanLII 878 (BC C.A.), (1992), 94 D.L.R. (4th) 541 (B.C.C.A.), at pp. 551-52

Most lawyers would find this in oldstyle untidy.

[Florian Hardwig]

So, that’s why all the EULAs and stuff come in daft all-caps? Because most lawyers find ascenders and descenders ‘untidy’? Oh dear!

[EK]

The conventions were developed when typewriters didn't have small caps or bold. Underline was for italics.

[Miss Tiffany]

Now. Now. Not all EULAs come in all caps. LOL

[Nick Shinn]

Most lawyers would find this in oldstyle untidy.

"Would" does not make a convincing prima facie case.

On further reflection, if you are correct in your assumption, I would hypothesize it's a matter of the importance given to legal precedence, with lawyers refering frequently to Law Reports, set in Modern with lining figures.

I have some old 19th century British Law Reports like that. Is that the general style to this day, perhaps updated to Times?

On a purely empirical basis, lining figures may no doubt be tidy, but they are also lumpy in running text, and even confusing, with the propensity for mixing up 3 with 8. Why would lawyers prefer tidyness to ugly ambiguity?

[EK]

Some courts in the United States require submissions in Times.

Generally lawyers nowadays cite from online sources. Most systems render cases and legislation from Westlaw and Quicklw in Arial.

[Zivatar]

Since at least 1900 (and probably much earlier than that), printed law reports in the US have uniformly used typefaces with lining figures only. The United States Reports (U.S. Supreme Court opinions) use Century Expanded in the printed version, and Century Schoolbook in the preliminary versions handed out to the press and downloadable from the Court's website. I can't remember what typeface the West reporters use, but they, too, use lining figures only. The vast majority of law firms use Times New Roman, which likewise has lining figures only (at least in the standard Windows versions). Legal texts and law school casebooks use lining figures only. And because citations are put in text rather than footnotes, legal briefs and judicial opinions and law school materials use LOTS of figures, vastly more than in, say, an ordinary novel or magazine article.

So any lawyer whose uses a typeface with old-style figures (I see Georgia from time to time, for example) is screaming "WEIRD!! DIFFERENT!!!" As far as 99.9% of lawyers and judges are concerned, that lawyer might as well use P.T. Barnum or Comic Sans or Blue Island. For a profession as hidebound as the law, OSF are a serious no-no. Legal typefaces need to be invisible, and they can't be invisible if they use OSF.

[EK]

Legal texts and law school casebooks use lining figures only.

Aspen publishes popular 1L textbooks set in Minion with osf.
And I've seen publications coming out of the offices of big (national) firms, set in Georgia and Garamond with osf, so things may be changing.

[Zivatar]

I can't comment on 1L textbooks--I was a 1L 35 years ago, and have no recent 1L texts on hand. And Aspen (recently eaten by Wolters Kluwer) is small potatoes in American legal publishing. But I compulsively went through the several dozen Aspen treatises and texts (maybe 150 volumes in all) in my firm's library, and every single one uses lining figures only. There was one small exception--on the cover and title page of one supplement, "2007-2008" was in OSF, but the body text in that volume uses lining figures only.

I also double-checked the U.S. Reports, and they're lining figures only, all the way back to the first volume (1796).

As I said, from time to time I see legal publications that use OSF, almost always because they're done using a font (e.g., Georgia) that by default prints using OSF in Microsoft Word or WordPerfect . There are virtually no law firms, big or small, that use anything other than such word processing programs for in-house document production. Many (including my firm) often use outside printers when they aren't equipped to do them in house (e.g., for small format U.S. Supreme Court briefs), and those outside printers often use sophisticated layout programs such as InDesign. And my firm and many others farm out production of glossy propaganda sent to clients and prospective clients. But lining figures are still pretty near universal, and that hasn't changed recently. And I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of instances where OSF are used don't reflect a conscious choice of OSF over LF when both are available for use, but reflect a choice of an alternative font that happens to have default OSF by people who know nothing about typography, but do know that they're ready for a change of pace from Times New Roman and Arial.

Typographically, documents produced by lawyers and law firms, including the biggest and best firms, tend to suck, because few pay any attention at all to typographical matters. Sample legal briefs from any large, prestigious law firm, and you'll see documents that regularly violate every principle in Bringhurst. Why? Tradition, and the choices made by the firm's head secretary back when typewriters were cutting edge technology.

[EK]

I teach 1L, and two of the leading property casebooks, Singer and Dukeminier & Krier, come from Aspen. The latest edition (and only the latest) of the former is set with OSF. That's enough to refute Legal texts and law school casebooks use lining figures only, and to suggest times are indeed changing. If you check the publications of the top national law firms you'll find an overwhelming dominance of lining figure, but also the occasional osf.