TL;DR

TL;DR is an abbreviation usually used in Internet communications which stands for "too long, did not read".

It's also appears to be a policy of the American courts (in my experience as an attorney, and my practice spans several counties in the State of New York, multiple courts and federal courts, too).  The policy is - do not put too much into your pleading, or it will simply not be read.

Nothing is wrong with making your pleadings concise, precise and persuasive.

Yet, "concise" does not always mean "short", and it does for courts.

Courts expect you not to be concise, they expect you to be short, because they do not have time to review your pleadings, no matter how important they are - if they are too long.

Sometimes a lawsuit involves a lot of parties and a lot of claims against those parties.

NOT putting those claims into one single lawsuit, if the claims are related, is sanctionable as "duplication" of litigation.

PUTTING those claims into one single lawsuit may result in losing a right to adequately present each and every separate claim to the court - because of the court's page-limit/font size/ required structure of the pleadings "local rules".

What is even more interesting is that the government defendant's attorneys are sitting on the "Local Rules" committees of federal courts "helping" the courts define the rules in such a way that they practically block civil rights defendants' ability to adequately present cases to the court on Memorandums of Law and on further on on appeals.

Yet, the TL.DR principle works not only in federal courts, it is universally used everywhere.

Judges hire interns or direct the law clerks to write summaries of cases - and read only those summaries out of a voluminous case.

The word "voluminous" has become a swear word in judgespeak.

 Imagine that you have a criminal trial and your defense is restricted in how many witnesses you can present, and that each witness can only speak for 2 minutes max.

Your defense is thus restricted into what can be spat out in those 2 minutes.

Approximately the same happens in motions and on appeals where your number of pages is severely restricted.

Constitutional issues are notoriously complex to present to the court.

It is notoriously complex to overcome the so-called "presumptions of validity" of statutes.

Courts are notoriously frowning upon any claims of unconstitutional conduct by the government, so you need to really explain to the court, with references to the record, legislative history of a certain constitutional provision, history of discrimination on a certain issue, history of discrimination against your particular client, references to case law, treatises and law reviews, to persuade the court that a constitutional violation, indeed occurred.

That takes time.  That takes volume.

Some cases, like foreclosure cases, especially where the suing plaintiff's name is half the page, it is some kind of a Bank a/k/a Trust a/k/a Asset-Backed Certificate Z thing, and where issues of standing (the chain of title to the mortgage and note) are an issue (and they are an issue in practically every single foreclosure brought in New York courts, at least that is my practice), you HAVE to go through a large number of documents, received from discovery, received from the clerk's office, lawsuits against that particular "Bank a/k/a Trust a/k/a Asset-Backed Certificate Zillion" thing to show to the court why exactly this monster name does not have standing to sue your client.

In state foreclosure proceedings, there is no page limit requirement for motions or oppositions to motions.

Yet, the TL.DR rule comes to the fore in those proceedings anyway, because judges have too large of a caseload to be able to look through your case thoroughly, which begs the question - why then pretend that they looked at all and that you had "access to justice"?

Access to a negligent and hurried judge who only read a half-page jist out of a 4-inch binder of documents is not true access to justice (it may be a hyperbole as to some cases, in some cases you truly have to present large volumes of documents and comments on them).

And the judge, elected by the people to hear and resolve their grievances, must have the competence and the patience to actually review all of that, because the outcome is - whether a person in front of the judge will or will not keep his home, with his or her family in it.

Application of the TL.DR policy is unacceptable here - as it is in any other court case.

Yet, that policy is pervasive in courts, and in law schools professors insist that the "future lawyers of America" water down their arguments to the 8th-grade level so that the judges on the bench "in a fast paced environment" are able to comprehend it.

Well, some issues simply cannot be watered down to the 8th-grade level.

And then it will be blamed on you - and your client.

And that situation should be changed by a court reform.