Jury Charge Dictation at 180 WPM (Realtime, No Editing)
Jury charge dictation at 180 wpm
This domain tests realtime writing of jury instructions at 180 wpm with no editing. The charge is dense with legal terms, statutory citations, defined phrases, numbers, and conditional logic. Accuracy is judged on the written text, so a dropped not or a wrong party name changes the legal meaning.
Core rules
- Hold the logical skeleton: if/then, unless, provided that, burden of proof, and preponderance of the evidence. These phrases recur and should be briefed as stable units.
- Keep party roles exact: plaintiff, defendant, appellant, appellee, petitioner, respondent. Do not substitute one for another even when the reader’s meaning seems clear.
- Write citations and numbers in a consistent realtime form: 42 U.S.C. § 1983, Section 1983, Exhibit 12, Instruction No. 7. Use the section sign and abbreviation periods if your dictionary defines them.
- Punctuate restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses with care. A comma can signal that a clause is descriptive rather than definitional.
- Preserve headings and numbered paragraphs; jury charges are often read in blocks.
Worked example
Dictated: “Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant acted under color of state law.” Reasoning: 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is a citation unit, so the periods in U.S.C. and the section sign are part of the text. The comma after 1983 closes the introductory phrase. Plaintiff and defendant are lowercase in running text. Color of state law is a fixed legal phrase; do not write collar or state’s law. The sentence has one predicate, so no comma before that. A realtime writer must produce this whole citation without a cleanup pass.
Traps
- Mishearing plaintiff as defendant or appellant as appellee.
- Dropping not, unless, or only in a condition.
- Writing may for shall or must for should.
- Turning proximate cause into approximate cause.
- Failing to capitalize a named statute or court when the charge does.