Certificate of Compliance in a Colorado Appellate Brief: What It Must Say
The certificate that gets briefs stricken
A Colorado appellate brief can be substantively excellent and still come back. The most common reason is not the argument. It is the Certificate of Compliance — the short block at the end in which counsel certifies that the brief satisfies C.A.R. 28 and C.A.R. 32, states the word count, and acknowledges that the brief may be stricken if it does not comply.
It is a paragraph of boilerplate at the end of weeks of work, which is exactly why it goes wrong. It is drafted last, often at the filing deadline, and the number in it is frequently the number the word processor reported rather than the number the rule asks for.
The word count is not the word processor’s word count
This is the trap worth understanding, because it is the one that produces a wrong certificate while everything looks correct on screen.
The limit under C.A.R. 28(g) applies to the substance of the brief. It does not count the caption, the tables of contents and authorities, the certificates, or the signature blocks. Those pages are part of the document and part of what your word processor counts, but they are not part of what the rule counts.
The practical consequence runs both ways:
- A brief can be reported as over the limit when it is not. Tables of authorities in a case with heavy citation can run several pages. Counsel cuts argument to fit a limit the rule never imposed.
- A certificate can state a number that is simply wrong. If you certify the whole-document count, you have certified something inaccurate — in a document whose entire purpose is to certify accuracy.
Selecting only the countable sections and counting those is the correct method, and it is tedious to do by hand under deadline, which is why it gets approximated.
What the certificate has to do
Three things, and each is a separate assertion:
- Compliance with the formatting rules — C.A.R. 28 and C.A.R. 32, including the formatting requirements those rules set out.
- Compliance with the word limit in C.A.R. 28(g), together with the actual count.
- Acknowledgement that the brief may be stricken if it fails any requirement of C.A.R. 28 or 28.1, or C.A.R. 32.
Signed, with counsel’s registration number and party designation.
Sample language
Adapt this to your brief. Where the court or a division has prescribed particular wording, use theirs.
CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE
I hereby certify that this brief complies with all requirements of C.A.R. 28 and C.A.R. 32, including all formatting requirements set forth in these rules.
Specifically, the undersigned certifies that:
This brief complies with the applicable word limit set forth in C.A.R. 28(g).
It contains [NUMBER] words (excluding the caption, certificates, tables, and signature blocks).
I acknowledge that my brief may be stricken if it fails to comply with any of the requirements of C.A.R. 28 or 28.1, and C.A.R. 32.
/s/ [COUNSEL] [COUNSEL], Reg. No. [NUMBER] Attorney for [PARTY DESIGNATION]
Two notes on filling it in. The parenthetical about what is excluded is not decoration — it tells the court which count you are certifying, which is the whole point of the sentence. And the number should come from counting the countable sections, not from selecting the whole document.
A checklist for the hour before filing
- Word count taken from the argument and other countable sections only, not the full document.
- The number in the certificate matches the number you actually counted.
- Both C.A.R. 28 and C.A.R. 32 named, along with the acknowledgement clause.
- Registration number and party designation present and correct.
- The certificate itself, the tables and the caption excluded from the count you just certified.
- Formatting checked against C.A.R. 32 rather than against the last brief you filed, which may predate a rule change.
That last point deserves emphasis. Appellate rules are amended. A template that was compliant three years ago is not evidence that it is compliant now, and inherited templates are how a single formatting error propagates across a practice for years.
Where the software fits
COAPP drafts Colorado Court of Appeals opening briefs from the record and treats these requirements as part of the document rather than as a final check. It counts only the sections that count under C.A.R. 28(g) — excluding caption, tables and certificates — and carries that number into the Certificate of Compliance, so the certified figure and the actual figure are the same number by construction. Each generated section is attributed to the record documents it came from, so the substance can be verified as quickly as the arithmetic.
That does not remove counsel’s judgement, and it should not. It removes the class of error where a correct brief is stricken over a number that was never checked.
This page describes practice under the Colorado Appellate Rules as implemented in our own software. It is general information, not legal advice. Verify the current text of C.A.R. 28, 28.1 and 32 and any division-specific requirements before filing — the rules are amended, and the rule text is the authority.