Anyway, it\u2019s safe to say that I\u2019m the minority opinion on this one:<\/p>\n To the Hon. Members of the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary: We, the undersigned, respectfully request the commencement of impeachment proceedings into the Hon. O. Rogeriee Thompson, U.S. Circuit Judge, for high crimes and misdemeanors, evidence of which is attached:\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/GElQL7QfVx<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Legal Style Blog (@legalstyleblog) September 9, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Instituto M\u00e9dico del Norte v. Greengift Capital<\/em><\/a> does, in fact, fill in the deets, but the opening actually does accomplish the time-honored role of SparkNotes by letting us know the main characters, their motivations, and the source of their dispute with the exact same approach that helped us avoid reading The Scarlet Letter<\/em>.<\/p>\n Who am I kidding? It was Cliff\u2019s Notes then. And I did read The Scarlett Letter<\/em>. The Mayor of Casterbridge<\/em> on the other hand\u2026.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll start at the beginning, of course. Back in 1984, Instituto obtained a loan to the tune of $10,683,230 from Ponce Bank to build a hospital in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n But Instituto and Ponce quickly fell into a dispute. The dispute\u2019s details are admittedly complicated and not well-documented in the record before us, but here\u2019s what we can glean from the parties\u2019 materials\u2026.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This reads like a conversation with your good friend Judge Thompson giving you all the gossip she\u2019s heard about these companies. That\u2019s not how opinions are usually written, but it\u2019s so much more engaging.<\/p>\n But admittedly \u2014 and with no disrespect intended towards the bankruptcy court \u2014 we struggle to make sense of several key determinations in its dispositive order. We know that bankruptcy courts are quite busy, and they also don\u2019t have an obligation to make specific findings of fact or to elaborate on their decisions when resolving motions for summary judgment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Given the byzantine nature of this dispute, the bankruptcy court probably couldn\u2019t lay it all out without taking the sort of narrative approach employed here.<\/p>\n While Instituto\u2019s bankruptcy plan was being worked out, Instituto and Oriental got into it about how much Oriental should be paid.\u00a0But they worked it out.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Standard legal writing? No. But, likely a far better picture of what happened than any formal language could convey. The whole dispute drips with the pettiness of a middle school cafeteria incident and would \u201cInstituto and Oriental arrived at an impasse over the proper treatment of the allowed secured claim before reaching a temporary resolution\u201d followed by three paragraphs nobody cares about send the reader that same context?<\/p>\n Not for nothing, if we want to stop AI from training itself to replace human legal writers, Judge Thompson is doing the Lord\u2019s work in messing up the algorithm. <\/p>\n Oh, and then there are the defined terms:<\/p>\n The final plan (which we uncreatively christen \u201cThe Plan\u201d) approved by the bankruptcy court incorporated most of the above-reproduced language, but not all.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s how all the definitions play out. To all the 1Ls out there: do this, watch your legal writing instructor\u2019s head explode, and then say \u201csorry, I guess I just care more about modeling my work on a distinguished federal appellate judge than you do.\u201d<\/p>\n Other moments over the following pages: \u201cAnd then things began to go off the rails,\u201d \u201cThus spawned more motions,\u201d and, referring to a bankruptcy court determination \u201c(whatever that means).\u201d<\/p>\n With those five sentences, the litigation before the bankruptcy court came to an end.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This line actually stood out the most. The bankruptcy opinion was plenty formal, gathering 1,000 exhibits and proceeding with the cadence of authority before delivering its curt conclusion. The First Circuit opinion is saying \u2014 both in substance and with this style \u2014 that stiff legalese isn\u2019t always rigor. Sometimes it functions as camouflage for decisions that don\u2019t stand up to the elevator pitch test. To that end, the unanimous First Circuit panel isn\u2019t disrespecting a fellow judge \u2014 which is a much more disturbing trend in legal writing<\/a> than using \u201cdeets\u201d \u2014 but explaining that formality can become a cage that leads to the wrong result.<\/p>\n Ultimately, the holding here is that litigants were owed an explanation, and the court delivered it in plain (perhaps too plain for many) terms. <\/p>\n Just imagine the legitimacy crisis that could result if a court ran around issuing deeply significant rulings while stubbornly refusing to provide its reasoning<\/a>! I mean, that wouldn\u2019t be as serious as a judge using the word \u201cdeets,\u201d but I\u2019m sure it would be pretty bad.<\/p>\n The post Is This Federal Appellate Opinion Too Informal?<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n First Circuit Senior Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson is 75 years old, but you wouldn\u2019t know it from this opinion. <\/p>\n Channeling her inner Gen Z, Judge Thompson put out a lengthy bankruptcy opinion that took a sledgehammer to the air of formality that\u2019s surrounded legal opinions since\u2026 well, forever. The effect is jarring to anyone familiar with federal judicial opinions. To call it unorthodox undersells it.<\/p>\n And yet, read in full, the opinion untangles a complicated, multiyear bankruptcy saga in a readable \u2014 dare I say, pleasant \u2014 40-page account. Honestly, I expected to find myself more critical of this opinion. I\u2019ve been quite critical of judges exploiting the inherent power imbalance to score laughs at the expense of litigants<\/a>. That said, this isn\u2019t a criminal defendant or fraud victim watching their world become a judicial plaything \u2014 it\u2019s a gnarly corporate bankruptcy dispute. In that context, this all\u2026 kind of works?<\/p>\n Anyway, it\u2019s safe to say that I\u2019m the minority opinion on this one:<\/p>\n To the Hon. Members of the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary: We, the undersigned, respectfully request the commencement of impeachment proceedings into the Hon. O. Rogeriee Thompson, U.S. Circuit Judge, for high crimes and misdemeanors, evidence of which is attached:\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/GElQL7QfVx<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Legal Style Blog (@legalstyleblog) September 9, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Instituto M\u00e9dico del Norte v. Greengift Capital<\/em><\/a> does, in fact, fill in the deets, but the opening actually does accomplish the time-honored role of SparkNotes by letting us know the main characters, their motivations, and the source of their dispute with the exact same approach that helped us avoid reading The Scarlet Letter<\/em>.<\/p>\n Who am I kidding? It was Cliff\u2019s Notes then. And I did read The Scarlett Letter<\/em>. The Mayor of Casterbridge<\/em> on the other hand\u2026.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll start at the beginning, of course. Back in 1984, Instituto obtained a loan to the tune of $10,683,230 from Ponce Bank to build a hospital in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n But Instituto and Ponce quickly fell into a dispute. The dispute\u2019s details are admittedly complicated and not well-documented in the record before us, but here\u2019s what we can glean from the parties\u2019 materials\u2026.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This reads like a conversation with your good friend Judge Thompson giving you all the gossip she\u2019s heard about these companies. That\u2019s not how opinions are usually written, but it\u2019s so much more engaging.<\/p>\n But admittedly \u2014 and with no disrespect intended towards the bankruptcy court \u2014 we struggle to make sense of several key determinations in its dispositive order. We know that bankruptcy courts are quite busy, and they also don\u2019t have an obligation to make specific findings of fact or to elaborate on their decisions when resolving motions for summary judgment.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Given the byzantine nature of this dispute, the bankruptcy court probably couldn\u2019t lay it all out without taking the sort of narrative approach employed here.<\/p>\n While Instituto\u2019s bankruptcy plan was being worked out, Instituto and Oriental got into it about how much Oriental should be paid.\u00a0But they worked it out.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Standard legal writing? No. But, likely a far better picture of what happened than any formal language could convey. The whole dispute drips with the pettiness of a middle school cafeteria incident and would \u201cInstituto and Oriental arrived at an impasse over the proper treatment of the allowed secured claim before reaching a temporary resolution\u201d followed by three paragraphs nobody cares about send the reader that same context?<\/p>\n Not for nothing, if we want to stop AI from training itself to replace human legal writers, Judge Thompson is doing the Lord\u2019s work in messing up the algorithm. <\/p>\n Oh, and then there are the defined terms:<\/p>\n The final plan (which we uncreatively christen \u201cThe Plan\u201d) approved by the bankruptcy court incorporated most of the above-reproduced language, but not all.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s how all the definitions play out. To all the 1Ls out there: do this, watch your legal writing instructor\u2019s head explode, and then say \u201csorry, I guess I just care more about modeling my work on a distinguished federal appellate judge than you do.\u201d<\/p>\n Other moments over the following pages: \u201cAnd then things began to go off the rails,\u201d \u201cThus spawned more motions,\u201d and, referring to a bankruptcy court determination \u201c(whatever that means).\u201d<\/p>\n With those five sentences, the litigation before the bankruptcy court came to an end.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This line actually stood out the most. The bankruptcy opinion was plenty formal, gathering 1,000 exhibits and proceeding with the cadence of authority before delivering its curt conclusion. The First Circuit opinion is saying \u2014 both in substance and with this style \u2014 that stiff legalese isn\u2019t always rigor. Sometimes it functions as camouflage for decisions that don\u2019t stand up to the elevator pitch test. To that end, the unanimous First Circuit panel isn\u2019t disrespecting a fellow judge \u2014 which is a much more disturbing trend in legal writing<\/a> than using \u201cdeets\u201d \u2014 but explaining that formality can become a cage that leads to the wrong result.<\/p>\n Ultimately, the holding here is that litigants were owed an explanation, and the court delivered it in plain (perhaps too plain for many) terms. <\/p>\n Just imagine the legitimacy crisis that could result if a court ran around issuing deeply significant rulings while stubbornly refusing to provide its reasoning<\/a>! I mean, that wouldn\u2019t be as serious as a judge using the word \u201cdeets,\u201d but I\u2019m sure it would be pretty bad.<\/p>\n The post Is This Federal Appellate Opinion Too Informal?<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" First Circuit Senior Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson is 75 years old, but you wouldn\u2019t know it from this opinion. Channeling her inner Gen Z, Judge Thompson put out a lengthy bankruptcy opinion that took a sledgehammer to the air of formality that\u2019s surrounded legal opinions since\u2026 well, forever. The effect is jarring to anyone familiar […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":162684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\n![\"Headshot\"](\"https:\/\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2016\/11\/Headshot-300x200.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n
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\nJoe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n