As pro­fes­sional writ­ers, law­yers ought to rely on pro­fes­sional fonts. They’re the quick­est and eas­i­est way to up­grade your ty­pog­ra­phy. More about that in font rec­om­men­da­tions.

But pro­fes­sional fonts aren’t al­ways an op­tion. Cer­tain projects de­mand sys­tem fonts, which are the fonts al­ready in­stalled on your com­puter. In printed doc­u­ments, they present three problems.

1. Many sys­tem fonts aren’t good. The Win­dows and Mac OS li­braries have im­proved, but they’re still mine­fields of aw­ful fonts. I won’t name names, but my least fa­vorite rhymes with Barial.

2. Many sys­tem fonts have been op­ti­mized for the screen, not print. This comes at the cost of de­sign de­tails, which have been sanded off be­cause they don’t re­pro­duce well on screen. Screen-op­ti­mized fonts look clunky on the printed page.

   

   Com­pare the two fonts above. In ba­sic ap­pear­ance, they’re sim­i­lar. But Geor­gia was op­ti­mized for the screen; Miller was op­ti­mized for print. See the difference?

3. All sys­tem fonts are over­ex­posed. Be­cause these fonts are in­cluded with bil­lions of com­put­ers, they’re used all the time. Not every ty­pog­ra­phy project de­mands nov­elty. But if yours does, look else­where. For in­stance, please don’t adopt the slo­gan “A Law Firm Un­like Any Other” and then set it in Helvetica.

If you’re lim­ited to sys­tem fonts, con­sult this chart and choose wisely. For print, the A list is best. For screen dis­play, like pre­sen­ta­tions and web­sites, the A and B lists are fine. They’re also suit­able for shar­ing draft doc­u­ments. Avoid the C list if you can. F list, kapu.

Fonts plau­si­ble for body text are marked with ★. Oth­ers are us­able for spe­cial pur­poses (for in­stance, let­ter­head).

This chart in­cludes all the com­mon Win­dows and Mac sys­tem fonts, plus the Mi­crosoft Of­fice fonts. Sys­tem con­fig­u­ra­tions dif­fer, so not every font will be on your computer.

These rank­ings rep­re­sent a blend of prac­ti­cal and aes­thetic con­sid­er­a­tions, not ab­solute merit. Some fonts on the F list aren’t bad. They’re just in­apt for a law of­fice. Sim­i­larly, some fonts on the A list are not my fa­vorites, but they’re rea­son­ably useful.