The First Two Pages: How to Write a Statement of Facts That Actually Moves the Judge
Most lawyers spend the bulk of their brief-writing time on the argument section. They labor over the standard of review, polish their point headings, and obsess over whether they have cited the right cases. Then, at the end, they dash off a Statement of Facts that reads like a police report, names, dates, events, in chronological order, nothing more.
That’s a mistake. And it may cost you more than you realize.
Here is the same set of hypothetical facts written in two different ways. First, the typical approach:
On March 3, 2022, Acme Corporation and Martinez entered into a services agreement. The agreement contained a termination clause at Section 12(b). On July 15, 2022, Acme sent Martinez a notice of termination. Martinez disputed the termination on July 22, 2022. Acme ceased payments on August 1, 2022.
Now a second version:
Acme Corporation pulled the plug on Martinez’s contract without warning, four months after he completed every deliverable on time, under budget, and without a single written complaint. Acme’s only justification was a boilerplate termination clause it had never invoked in twelve years of contracting. Martinez lost six months of expected income overnight.
Same facts. Entirely different impression. The second version does not distort anything, it just does the work that the first version refused to do. That work is persuasion, and your Statement of Facts is where it starts.
Pick a Theory First, Then Pick Your Facts
Before you write a single sentence of your fact section, you need a theory of the case—a one- or two-sentence answer to the question: Why should my client win? Everything in your Statement of Facts should serve that theory, or at a minimum, not undercut it.
Think of it as a three-bucket test for every fact you are considering. Ask yourself: Does this fact help my theory? Does it hurt my theory? Or does it do nothing? The third category is what bloats most fact sections into forgettable walls of text.
Consider a straightforward breach-of-contract case. The theory is simple: the defendant broke a clear promise, and the plaintiff relied on it to his detriment. With that theory in hand, the procedural history of how the parties first met, the organizational structure of the defendant company, and the biography of every witness are all third-bucket facts. They do not help you; they dilute you. Cut them.
The facts that survive this filter are the ones that build your story brick by brick. The contract term that was unambiguous. The reliance that was reasonable. The breach that was willful. The harm that was foreseeable. Write toward those facts. Everything else is noise.
Lead with Your Best Moment, Not the Beginning
Chronology is the default because it is comfortable. It feels organized. It feels safe. But comfort and persuasion are often enemies.
The opening sentences of your Statement of Facts carry disproportionate weight. Judges, like all readers, form impressions quickly and carry them forward. If your first paragraph is procedural throat-clearing (“This is a breach of contract action arising from a services agreement entered into in 2022…”), you have already wasted your most valuable real estate.
Instead, find your single most powerful fact, the moment that most clearly illustrates the injustice you are asking the court to remedy, and lead with it, or at least to end your opening paragraph on it.
This does not require invention or distortion. It requires reordering. You can always provide the necessary background after you have hooked the reader. Think of it as the way a good journalist writes a story: the lead comes first, the context follows.
A motion for summary judgment in an employment discrimination case might open not with the plaintiff’s start date and job title, but with the manager’s documented comment that he “didn’t want to deal with” an employee after she disclosed her pregnancy—and then work backward to explain who these people are and what the relationship looked like.
You are still being accurate. You are simply being strategic about when the reader learns what.
Name Characters, Not Titles
“The plaintiff” and “the defendant” are technically correct. They are also, in the hands of most judges, reading dozens of briefs per month, invisible.
Judges are human beings. Human beings respond to names, to people, to stakes. The moment you reduce your client to “the plaintiff” and your opponent to “the defendant,” you have made your story abstract. Abstract stories are forgettable. Forgettable stories lose.
Use names, real ones, or company names, or role-based shorthand that feels human (“Martinez,” “Acme,” “the Board,” “the investigating officer”). Pick a convention and stick with it. Introduce it cleanly in the first reference (“Plaintiff Daniel Martinez, a licensed electrician with twelve years of experience, began working for Acme…”) and then drop the procedural title for the rest of the section.
This is especially important for your client. Your client should feel like a person with a life, a livelihood, and something genuinely at stake. That does not mean you are writing a sympathy plea, it means you are writing a story with a protagonist, and protagonists have names.
The same principle applies to humanizing the wrongful conduct. “Acme terminated the agreement” is passive and clinical. “Acme’s vice president, without consulting legal counsel and over the written objection of Martinez’s direct supervisor, sent a termination notice at 4:58 p.m. on a Friday” is something a judge remembers.
The Power of the Short Sentence at a Key Moment
Here is a tiny tip worth taping above your monitor: after a long, complex passage of background, write one short sentence that hits like a hammer.
Most legal writing is dense by necessity. You are establishing facts, citing the record, laying a foundation. That density is unavoidable. But when you arrive at the single most damning or dispositive moment in your fact narrative, don’t bury it in a subordinate clause. Give it its own sentence. Make it short. Let it land.
Compare:
Despite having been informed by three separate supervisors that the equipment was defective and that continued operation posed a significant risk to employees, and notwithstanding the written safety report submitted to management on October 12th, the company continued to require workers to operate the equipment on the following shift.
Versus:
Three supervisors warned management. A written safety report flagged the defective equipment on October 12th. Management ordered workers back onto the line the next morning.
The second version is shorter, simpler, and far more damaging. The rhythm shift, dense background, then a punchy short sentence, signals to the reader that something important just happened. It gives the judge a place to stop, absorb, and react.
Use this technique sparingly. Save it for your two or three most important factual moments. Overuse blunts the effect.
What to Do with Bad Facts
This is the section that most how-to posts skip. Every case has bad facts. Pretending otherwise doesn’t make them disappear, it just means the other side gets to introduce them first, in the worst possible framing, without your fingerprints on them.
The answer is not to hide bad facts. That’s an ethical problem and a credibility problem. The answer is to control them.
You have two reliable options:
Option 1: Acknowledge and contextualize early. If the bad fact is significant enough that opposing counsel will certainly lead with it, get there first. Introduce it in your own words, with your own framing, and immediately provide the context that blunts its impact. A prior disciplinary action against your client hits very differently when you introduce it as a single incident in a twelve-year career than when opposing counsel introduces it as evidence of a pattern.
Option 2: Structural subordination. For facts that are relevant but not case-defining, place them in the middle of a paragraph, in a subordinate clause, surrounded by favorable facts. Readers’ attention is strongest at the beginning and end of paragraphs. The middle absorbs without emphasizing. This is not deception, it is the craft of sequencing.
What you should never do is omit a material bad fact in hopes that the court won’t notice. Courts notice. And when they do, your credibility, and your client’s case, take damage that no clever argument can repair.
A Pre-Submission Checklist
Before you finalize any Statement of Facts, run through these five questions:
- Does every included fact connect to my theory of the case? If you cannot explain in one sentence why a fact earns its place, cut it.
- Does my opening paragraph lead with something that creates an impression, not just an orientation? If it reads like a case caption, rewrite it.
- Does my client feel like a person? Read the section aloud. If you never feel anything, a judge won’t either.
- Have I used at least one strategic short sentence to land my most important moment? If everything is the same length, nothing stands out.
- Have I addressed every significant bad fact in my own words before opposing counsel does? If the answer is no, you are leaving the framing to the other side.
The Statement of Facts is not a formality. It is not a neutral record. In the hands of a skilled advocate, it is the first and most durable argument in the brief—the one that shapes how every legal standard, every cited case, and every point heading is read afterward. Write it like it matters.
Because it does.
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Notable LinkedIn Posts and Comments
Natasha Giuffre on diffuse knowledge within a legal department
Emily Logan Stedman on dealing with the AI-using pro-se litigant
Joseph Ketsenburg on using AI to generate legal study aids
Megan Wade on favorite substitutions for legalese
Podcast/Media of the Month
How to Navigate Inner Conflict | The OptimalWork Podcast
The Ethics and Philosophy of AI in Legal Practice | The California Appellate Law Podcast
Ep# 105: The Counterintuitive Solution to Getting More Work Done [Agile Lawyering Part 5]| The Agile Attorney Podcast
Law Journal Articles
Acciarri, Hugo, The Illusion of Transparency – On Duties to Disclose the Use of AI and to Cite AI in Judicial Filings (December 18, 2025). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5939179 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5939179
Abraham, Kenneth S. and Sharkey, Catherine M., Untangling AI Liability (February 23, 2026). Virginia Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 2026-19, Virginia Law and Economics Research Paper No. 2026-05, Untangling AI Liability, 115 California Law Review (forthcoming 2027), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6293099 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6293099
Shucha, Bonnie J., AI Prompting for Legal Professionals: The Art of Asking the Right Question (November 10, 2025). Univ. of Wisconsin Legal Studies Research Paper No.1902, 98 (10) Wisconsin Lawyer 29 (2025), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=6136746 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6136746
