About 100 out of the 1,500 petitions for certification filed each year are granted by the New Jersey Supreme Court. Those odds are not great. Although the merits of a petition remain the critical path to its disposition, its presentation also matters. A recent, unscientific survey of filed petitions suggests that they tend to be scattershot, unfocused, repetitive and unnecessarily lengthy. Many simply repeat the petitioner’s appellate arguments as if the petition was just another rung on the appeal-as-of-right ladder and without reference to the standards for certification set forth in R.2:12-4. Our purpose here is not to fault the lawyers who file those petitions. For many, it will be their first and only experience with Supreme Court practice. We do, however, question what R.2:12-7(a) sets forth as the template for a petition.

In relevant part, that rule mandates that the petition contain a short statement of the matter involved; the question presented; the errors complained of; the reasons why certification should be allowed, and comments with respect to the Appellate Division opinion. Although there are technical differences between those requirements, there is enough similarity among them to leave a lawyer wondering how to prepare a persuasive petition that does not say the same thing over and over again. And lawyers fail to meet that challenge because, in an abundance of caution, they repeat themselves in an effort to hit all their marks.

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