Opinion
Opinion Delivered June 10, 1991.
On and after August 1, 1991, all briefs submitted to the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals will be accompanied by abstracts of record, as provided in Arkansas Supreme Court and Court of Appeals Rule 9. We will no longer accept briefs including appendices.
The Per Curiam Order by which we created a trial period for experimental changes in our Rules was issued May 15, 1989, entitled, "In re: Amendments to the Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure, the Arkansas Rules of Appellate Procedure, the Arkansas Supreme Court Administrative Orders, the Rules of the Arkansas Supreme Court and Court of Appeals, and the Inferior Court Rules." In that Order we made it clear that the rules changes having to do with the appendix experiment were adopted on a trial basis but that the changes no longer allowing printed briefs and establishing uniform paper size were to be permanent. We hereby revoke the changes, other than those having to do with printed briefs and paper size, which provided for submitting appendices rather than abstracts. We retain the changes with respect to paper size.
The reason for ending the appendix experiment at this time is that we have found that it adds to the difficulty of, and time consumed in, reading briefs. If our case load and that of the Court of Appeals were not so great, we would be less willing to revert entirely to the abstracting system. Given the numbers of cases we must decide to remain current with our docket, however, we cannot tolerate the additional work we find the appendix system to have caused.
The experiment with the appendix system began with our Per Curiam Order of October 17, 1988, creating a trial period for testing the new system which, with one intermission and two extensions, was to end March 1, 1991. As was expected, there were difficulties in adapting to the change. The main one from our perspective was the problem of expansion of the statement of the case, with appropriate appendix references, to an extent which would save members of the Court from having to scour the appendix for factual details.
If we find a way to bring our case load and that of the Court of Appeals within reason, we may return to the appendix system, with some revisions, because we continue to wish to implement the goals stated in our original order. We would like our system to be as inexpensive and simple as possible. Under other circumstances we will be able to exercise the patience required to permit lawyers and litigants to become accustomed to the change and to fine tune it with revisions.