<p>Actually, with most legal writing, – opinions, memoranda and briefs – you don’t usually have many footnotes because all the case citations and support go into the body of the text. The reference above is to footnotes in legal articles where you will find huge numbers of footnotes – citations and other referenced support that usually go into the body of an opinion, memorandum or brief, go into footnotes when doing legal articles. </p>
<p>The US Supreme Court is notorious for footnoting almost anything and often the judges negotiate with each other over whether something should be in the body of the opinion or a footnote or, even more often, negotiate over whether something should be left out of the opinion entirely or allow it to at least make a footnote. Also 20 page opinions are “short” for the Supreme Court.</p>
<p>In law school, you have certain classes that require a lot of writing that you turn in – legal writing courses usually in freshman year and then later a trial practice course. Most final exams are written (and the final is the only thing you ever turn in for the class and the only thing that determines your grade). You do a lot of writing for your own use including course outlines and case outlines. You must learn to write well or you will face doing poorly on those final exams. Where a lot of writing does occur is if you make law review or do moot court. Also, once you are a lawyer, you can easily end up writing large amounts of materials with many pages (and that is just on Monday …). In law school you sepnd far more hourse studying for the next day in a class which can often consist, first year, of reading only 20 pages of abstracted case opinions and questions and after 9 hours of trying to figure out what those 20 pages say, you actually think you got it. Then you go to class the next day, the prof goes to you and starts asking some questions to see if you learned anything and can use it and after about a minute into that exchange you realize that you spent nine hours reviewing 20 pages and still don’t understand them at all.</p>