Francis Pileggi points out something that, as a case book author, has been bugging me for a while; namely, the massive bloat in Delaware Chancery Court opinions:
Over the last three weeks or so, the Delaware Court of Chancery has issued three opinions of over 100 pages each in as many weeks, with one of those three being over 200 pages in length. Prolific would be a fair word to use, among others, to describe such prodigious output.
Bloated would be an even fairer word to use. In our case book, we make a determined effort to keep cases below 10 pages--in our experience, students just don't read 30-40 page assignments each day (I know I didn't back in my day--which is why we often end up looking outside Delaware. Chopping a 100+ page opinion down to 10 is really hard even when you have a great editor like Ramseyer on your side.
But even if we don't use these massive opinions, we still have to read them to keep up on our professional reading. And that must be even worse for practicing lawyers who need to maximize their billable hours.
So here's a plea for brevity.
