This is the first of what I hope to be a periodic column on the "arts and crafts of litigation," inspired by a series of continuing legal education panel programs I chaired. Here, arts and crafts encompasses any non-substantive aspect of litigation, including word-processing formatting, meta-data, scanning, bookmarking, hyperlinking, efiling and hard-copy production—whatever helps make your product pretty, readable, professional, rule-compliant and not foolish.

Statewide court rules implemented earlier this year cover this gamut, imposing a confusing panoply of requirements such as type-size, word length, word-number certifications, bookmarking, hyperlinking, summary judgment statements of material facts and, in lieu of exhibits, allowing reference to prior efiled documents by docket numbers on the efiling system (NYSCEF).

These rules came to most attorneys, if they knew of them at all, as somewhat of a shock. As David Paul Horowitz and Lukas M. Horowitz put it in their NYLJ article, "Surprise! New Rules Take Effect Monday" (Jan. 27, 2021), "[i]f you are thinking 'What new rules?,' you are not alone." The rules were implemented by a Dec. 29, 2020 Administrative Order of Chief Administrative Judge Marks (AO/270/2020), effective Feb. 1, 2021, essentially adopting certain Commercial Division rules into the civil rules of the Supreme Court and County Court, amending the Uniform Civil Rules, 22 NYCRR §202, et seq.