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Practice Direction 3 of 2023 - Style requirements for court documents

Practice Direction3 of 2023

STYLE REQUIREMENTS FOR COURT DOCUMENTS

1. To date, court documents have been prepared and filed in all manner of font, size and formatting so much so that many can be difficult to read. The ad hoc nature of such presentation is inconsistent with professional, modern litigation and court procedure.
2. Therefore, this Practice Direction seeks to standardise the presentation and formatting ofall court documents unless otherwise ordered.
3. Fonts: Times New Roman, Arial or Helvetica.
4. Size: minimum of 12 points for body text, 14 for document titles and 9 for footnotes.
5. Line spacing: minimum of 1.5 lines for body text and single spacing for quotations and footnotes.
6. Paragraph spacing: minimum of 6 points.
7. Margins: minimum of 2.5 centimetres.
8. All paragraphs are to be numbered sequentially throughout the document or within each numbered section of a document.
9. All documents (other than the first page thereof) are to be paginated with the page numbers appearing in the centre of the top of each page (so that discovery numbers can subsequently be applied to the top left and court book numbers can be applied to the bottom right of each page).
10. For environmental purposes, parties and practitioners are encouraged to print court documents double-sided.
11. Documents should be laser printed rather than by inkjet to avoid ink bleed and smudging when highlighted.
12. This Practice Direction shall take effect from 1 February 2023.
    

Michael Whitten KC
Lord Chief Justice of the Kingdom of Tonga

Nuku'alofa

27 January 2023