Cockle Legal Briefs is the leading filer of U.S. Supreme Court briefs.  The Court’s required booklet format is extremely specific and unusual.  And very few shops—or even general commercial printers—have the requisite expertise and equipment to prepare SCOTUS booklets.

These briefs are printed onto a 6 1/8 by 9 1/4-inch page of at least 60-pound paper (with 65-pound paper covers). Depending on the size of the brief, we’ll bind your document by either stapling through the spine—saddle stitching—or by a hot glue method—perfect binding.

So, will your brief be saddle stitched or perfect bound?

Your brief’s thickness will determine whether or not Cockle has an option between saddle stitching or perfect binding.  We generally recommend that briefs with page counts over 70 be perfect bound, and within certain technical limits, we can bind up to 480 pages into a single volume.

Saddle Stitching

In saddle stitching, multiple pages are bound together along the fold using staples.  This results in a brief that has no spine and lays flat on the table when opened.  Saddle stitch binding is great for smaller briefs and briefs without color.  This technique uses full sheets of paper (four SCOTUS pages of text), stapled together in the center. Then the book, including the cover, is folded in half along the stapled line. This is cost-effective and environment-friendly as no glue is used. Saddle stitch books can also be produced quickly. This method is commonly used for brochures, pamphlets, and comic books.

Perfect Bind

A perfect bind booklet has a flat spine. In this option, pages of the brief are printed duplex (front and back of one page), gathered together, glue is applied along the binding edge, and the cover is placed over and around the brief. These documents do not lay perfectly flat when opened, but this seamless spine creates a smoother, more aesthetic front edge.  This technique is also commonly used in books, journals, and catalogs.

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The briefs we prepare are texts of unsurpassed elegance and judicial application. Our clients’ research is exhaustive, and their prose graceful. But nothing can be read by the Justices until we’ve finished our work.

To ensure that your next United States Supreme Court brief is filed in a form that will command your reader’s respect, contact Cockle Legal Briefs.