| 1. | | Check the court rules before writing your Question Presented. Not all courts require one. Court rules also dictate where in the brief the Question Presented appears. |
| 2. | | Make your Questions Presented precise so that readers know exactly what issue or issues your case implicates. Avoid using the word “should,” which connotes a moral or pragmatic choice rather than a legal one. |
| 3. | | Frame the legal issue in a way that helps your client. |
| 4. | | Consider following the trend of adding facts that frame the Question favorably. Just don’t add too many facts or you will irritate judges. |
| 5. | | Make your prose in a Question Presented resemble ordinary sentences. Many lawyers, for no evident reason, believe that a Question Presented must be crammed into a single sentence. A 100-word sentence in a Question Presented will be just as impenetrable as that same sentence elsewhere in a brief. |
| 6. | | Harmonize these six competing goals: (i) write precisely, (ii) write succinctly, (iii) frame the legal issue favorably, (iv) frame the facts positively, (v) reason and write clearly, and (vi) project credibility. These goals often tug in different directions, so expect to compromise on one or more of these ideals. |
| 7. | | The exact wording of a Question Presented matters, but it matters less than the insight and judgment reflected in the choices of (i) which issues to raise, (ii) how to frame those issues, and (iii) how to sequence them. (See generally Chapter 11.) Examples of how to select, frame, and sort issues appear throughout this chapter. Be absolutely sure that you are raising sensible issues before you agonize about how you phrase them. |