The Legal Writing Institute recently presented the Golden Pen Award to Matthew Butterick for his groundbreaking book, Typography for Lawyers.

Butterick is both an attorney in Los Angeles, California specializing in criminal appeals and artists’ rights, as well as a graphic designer and typographist. In Typography for Lawyers, Butterick states that while legal writing is central to our work as attorneys, whether its a brief for the Supreme Court or a brief email for a client, good typography and elements of design is necessarily a part of good writing and good lawyering.

If you’re a skeptic, check out the website, which includes samples of legal documents transformed by Butterick’s typographical principles. You can’t deny that Butterick is onto something and a lot of important people in the legal writing community (like LWI and Bryan Garner) seem to agree.