Writing Tip: Using Footnotes in Early Drafts

Most agree with the idea that in legal briefs, you should cut the footnotes to a minimum.  Nonetheless, it's easy to "drop a footnote" using word-processing programs, and I do it a lot when I'm drafting--to add a note to myself about questions or revisions, or as a placeholder for a digression that can later be moved to another point in the brief.

You can fill up a brief with a number of such footnotes; in later drafts, you can omit them. Having the ability to add a footnote that will be omitted later will allow you to plow ahead when the most important goal is to get to the end of a draft and start over.