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ADR-031: Legal Drafting & Court Conventions

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Source~/.copilot/skills/adr/references/adr-031-legal-drafting-and-court-conventions.md
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ADR-031: Legal Drafting & Court Conventions

Decision

Every document filed in a Virginia court follows binding court formatting, legal register, citation, argument-structure, and numeric-rounding conventions. Open with the relief requested, draft in legal register, cite through the registry, and round support amounts to the dollar per the Virginia worksheet.

Key rules

Court formatting (was ADR-031)

  • First-page top margin is 1.5 inches; all other margins are 1 inch.
  • Body text is double-spaced, Times New Roman 12pt.
  • Facts and allegations appear in numbered paragraphs (1., 2., 3., …).
  • A certificate of service is required at the foot of every filed document.
  • Signature block uses ENTER: for the judge line and SEEN AND PRESENTED BY: for the attorney line.
  • The caption block includes the court name, case number, and parties in proper format.
  • All filed documents use legal register — no informal or colloquial language.
  • Self-reference is always “Petitioner” or the party name, never first person (“I”).
  • Verbs in orders are shall (obligation) and shall not (prohibition) — never “must”, “will”, or “should”.
  • Apply the Plain to Legal substitution dictionary (12 categories), e.g. “asks” becomes “moves” and “says” becomes “alleges”.
  • Use <LegalCitation> for every statute or rule citation; citation format follows Virginia style, and the year is omitted for statutes unless it is needed to distinguish versions.

Citations and terminology (was ADR-031)

  • Register every new statute or rule in src/components/patterns/myfreelawyer/components/virginia-citations.ts (the VIRGINIA_CITATIONS registry) before citing it.
  • Each registry entry carries a non-empty sourceUrl; empty URLs are not acceptable.
  • Citations render as hyperlinks on screen and clean text in print automatically — never hand-wrap them.
  • Screen-only links (source URLs visible only on screen) use the .no-print class.
  • “Deferred” is not a universal term — use the precise word: continued, reserved, held in abeyance, or stayed.

Argument structure (was ADR-031)

  • Open every document with the precise relief requested — not background, not facts.
  • Evidence goes in an exhibit section at the rear, never inline in the argument body.
  • Exhibit ordering: the controlling order or judgment is always Exhibit A; remaining exhibits follow in descending evidentiary weight.
  • Chronology belongs in an appendix, not woven through the argument.
  • Per-family specializations apply: motions (F1), declarations (F2), discovery requests (F3-F4), demand letters (F5).

Child-support rounding (was ADR-031)

  • Round the final monthly support amount to the nearest dollar with Math.round() — never Math.floor() or Math.ceil().
  • Track two values: monthlyPaymentAmount (rounded, displayed) and monthlyPaymentAmountUnrounded (audit/recalculation).
  • Intermediate calculations (pro-rata income splits, etc.) use unrounded values; only the final support amount is rounded.
  • Include roundingDisclaimer text wherever the amount is displayed.
  • This is the Virginia worksheet convention — do not deviate without a court order or attorney guidance.

Code patterns

// Child-support rounding: keep both values, round only at the end.
const monthlyPaymentAmountUnrounded = baseObligation * obligorIncomeShare;
const monthlyPaymentAmount = Math.round(monthlyPaymentAmountUnrounded);
// Display the rounded value through the locale helper (ADR-013):
formatCurrency(monthlyPaymentAmount); // → "$1,450.00"
{/* Citation: registry-driven, hyperlinked on screen, clean in print. */}
<LegalCitation id="va-code-20-108.2" />


{/* Screen-only source link is hidden from print. */}
<a className="no-print" href={sourceUrl}>View source</a>

Why

These conventions exist so generated filings are court-ready without manual cleanup: Virginia formatting and legal register satisfy the Rules of the Supreme Court of Virginia (Rule 1:4) and judicial expectation, leading with relief and rear-loading exhibits maximizes judicial impact, and a single citation registry keeps every reference linkable on screen yet clean in print. Dollar rounding follows the Va. Code § 20-108.2 guideline worksheet. Two reconciliations to current dmwd-io practice: the displayed rounded amount is rendered through the canonical locale helper formatCurrency (ADR-013), never a raw toFixed() or string interpolation; and the print-versus-screen split for citations and source links is realized with the .no-print class under the print-discipline rule (ADR-007) rather than per-document hand-wrapping.

Applies when

You are creating, editing, or reviewing any document intended for filing in a Virginia court — a motion, order, declaration, discovery request, or demand letter — adding a statute or rule citation, or implementing or auditing Virginia child-support calculation logic.

  • ADR-030 — MyfreeLawyer legal document architecture (the component, template, case-file, and data-file layers these conventions render within).
  • ADR-013 — locale and number formatting (formats the rounded support amount at the display layer).
  • ADR-007 — print discipline (the screen-versus-print behavior citations and source links depend on).