Legal professionals are pushing back against a courtroom practice that places lawyers in an awkward and potentially problematic position during proceedings.
Some judges, after announcing rulings at oral argument, direct one of the attorneys present to handwrite an order reflecting the court’s decision on the spot.
This practice does not occur in every court, and many judges either prepare their own orders or ask parties to submit a proposed order after an appearance.
However, the expectation that counsel will physically write out a binding order in the courtroom itself has raised serious concerns among legal practitioners.
Judges who employ this approach often justify it on the grounds of efficiency, given that courts frequently operate under significant time and resource pressures.
Having lawyers memorialize what just occurred can appear to reduce the burden on court personnel who would otherwise need to prepare and process the documentation themselves.
Attorneys involved in a case presumably understand the relevant issues and should, in theory, be capable of reducing a straightforward ruling to writing without difficulty.
Despite the apparent logic, this practice introduces a meaningful conflict because lawyers represent opposing parties and carry inherently adversarial interests into every aspect of a proceeding.
When one attorney is asked to draft an order immediately after argument, subtle word choices and framing decisions can influence how a ruling is later interpreted or enforced.
Handwritten orders produced under time pressure, inside a courtroom, create fertile ground for disputes over language that a more carefully drafted order would have avoided entirely.
The confusion that can follow from ambiguous or contested language in a handwritten order may ultimately cost the court more time than the original shortcut was ever intended to save.
A cleaner process, in which the court retains responsibility for drafting its own orders or at minimum reviews a typed proposed order submitted by both sides, better protects the integrity of the record.
Legal practitioners broadly agree that the courtroom should not become a place where adversarial counsel are put in the position of authoring the very documents that bind their opponents.
Judges who currently use this approach would be well served by reconsidering the practice in favour of procedures that reduce ambiguity and preserve confidence in the impartiality of court orders.