Circuit Rule 32-1: Length and Form of Briefs, Certificate of Compliance

(a) Principal Briefs: The opening and answering briefs filed by appellant and appellee, respectively, may not exceed 14,000 words. (New 12/1/16)

(b) Reply Brief: The reply brief filed by appellant may not exceed half of the length set forth in (a) above. (New 12/1/16)

(c) Exclusions: The portions of the brief required by FRAP 32(f) are excluded from the length limit calculation. (New 12/1/16)

(d) Form: FRAP 32(a)(1) – (6) otherwise governs the brief’s form. (New 12/1/16)

(e) Certificate of Compliance: A brief using a word count calculation of its length must be accompanied by Form 8, found on the Court’s website. (New 12/1/16)

(f) Visual Images Used for Demonstrative Purposes: Visual images, such as photographs, illustrations, tables, and screenshots of text or images, may be reproduced in briefs using any method that results in a good copy of the original. When a visual image is taken from the record, it must be followed by a citation to its location in the excerpts of record. Where words in a visual image are intended to be read by the Court, those words must be legible and must be manually counted and added to the certificate of compliance required under FRAP 32(g) and Circuit Rule 32-1(e). Visual images in briefs must comply with the 1-inch margin requirement of FRAP 32(a)(4). All other font size and formatting rules set forth under FRAP 32 do not apply to visual images that are included in briefs. (New 12/1/22)

(g) Handwritten or Typewritten Briefs Filed by Unrepresented Litigants: A handwritten or typewritten opening or answering brief may not exceed 50 pages. A handwritten or typewritten reply brief may not exceed 25 pages. (New 12/1/16; Rev. 12/1/24)

Circuit Advisory Committee Note to Rule 32-1

Rule 32(d) requires that all filings be signed. If the party does not have an attorney, the party should sign each filing. If the party has an attorney, the attorney should sign each filing. The rules do not directly regulate the process by which a party or an attorney produces the filing— such as writing it personally with no assistance, delegating part of its preparation to a subordinate, or employing generative artificial intelligence. Regardless of how the filing is prepared, the signature is an attestation that the signer has reviewed the filing and is responsible for the accuracy of its contents. Parties and attorneys should therefore be careful to ensure the reliability of any filing. (New 12/1/25)

Demonstrative visual images should not be used to replace quotations from the record, but rather only for illustrative purposes. Parties should paraphrase the text from the image in the preceding or subsequent sentence to explain its relevance to the legal issues before the court.

Some images, such as screenshots of handwritten notes or transcript excerpts, or tables used to convey information, are intended to be read by the court. In such cases, the words in the image must be counted and added to the certificate of compliance. Because FRAP 32’s font size and formatting rules are essential to readability, and because those rules do not apply to visual images, screenshots of text should be used sparingly, and screenshots of lengthy excerpts of text are strongly disfavored and may cause a brief to be rejected by the Clerk.

In other cases, a visual image is intended to show the court that something exists, or what something looks like, and any words in the picture or screenshot are incidental and need not be counted. For example, where a brief includes a photograph of an intersection that has a stop sign, the word “stop” need not be added to the brief’s word count.

Finally, some visual images fall somewhere in between. For example, with respect to a screenshot of a judgment of conviction included to resolve a dispute about which controlled substance was at issue, the pertinent words identifying the controlled substance must be counted, but other incidental words in the judgment need not be counted. (New 12/1/22)