Red-Team Your Own Filing Before You File It

September 5, 2026 9 min read by Institute for Police Conduct, Inc.

checklist drafting review motion-to-dismiss pro-se

The defense lawyer who reads your filing is paid to find the one paragraph that ends your case. You can find it first.

This article gives you the checklist that lawyer will use, adapted for each document you are likely to file, and a way to sort what you find so you fix the things that matter.

After reading this article, you should be able to:

run a universal attack checklist on any filing
run the document-specific checklist for the filing in front of you
sort every finding into one of five buckets
decide what to fix, what to narrow, and what to leave alone

Read this with How the Defense Will Try to Shrink, Reframe, or Kill Your Case, which explains the defense’s strategy. This article turns that strategy into a review you run yourself.

How to run the review

Do not review the draft the day you finish it. Wait at least one night. Then read it once as yourself, and once as the lawyer for the city.

If you can, hand it to someone who has not seen it and ask them to read it as the defense. A reader who knows nothing about your case will find the gaps a reader who knows everything cannot see.

Write down every problem you find before you fix any of them. Fixing as you go means you will stop finding.

The universal checklist

Apply these to every filing.

Do the caption, party names and capacities, title, docket references, signature, and requested relief all agree? A count against “Officer Martinez” when the caption says “Officer J. Martinez” invites a motion. A conclusion that asks for “all appropriate relief” after a brief that argued for denial of Counts I and III wastes the brief.
What is the posture, the deadline, the rule, the page limit, and the required attachments? Confirm each against your local-rules worksheet. A filing that is late or too long is not read.
Does every load-bearing fact trace to a source? For each factual sentence, ask which of the four kinds it is: your personal knowledge, an attributed record fact, a labeled inference, or a legal conclusion. Anything that is none of those is a target.
Does every load-bearing legal proposition trace to an authority that actually says it? Check identity, that the case exists and is cited correctly. Check status, that it has not been reversed or overruled. Check the pinpoint, that the page cited says what you claim. Check posture, that a summary-judgment holding is not being cited as a pleading rule.
Is the chronology straight? Who knew what, when? Is any later fact being used to justify an earlier decision? Is every actor tied to a specific act at a specific time?
Is there an unapproved concession anywhere? An adverse characterization repeated in your own voice, a caveat that helps the other side, a point the other side made that you left unanswered without meaning to.
Does the argument match the requested ruling? If you argued three counts survive, does the conclusion ask for denial as to those three counts by name?
What did you attach or incorporate, and what does the whole document say? Every exhibit and every quoted record is now before the court in full. Review each one for the defense-favorable parts. See Should You Attach the Video to Your Complaint?.

The document checklists

Run the universal checklist, then exactly one of these.

Complaint or amended complaint

Is the Rule 8 and Rule 10 spine complete: jurisdiction, venue, parties with capacities, color of law, chronological numbered facts, separate counts, injury, relief, jury demand, signature?
For every count and every defendant: the constitutional right, the elements, the decisive facts by paragraph number, what the defendant knew at the time, the application, the defendant’s personal role, causation, injury, and a result sentence. Attack every “Defendants” that should be a name and every “incorporates all preceding paragraphs.”
Does every information-and-belief allegation state what you know, what records will show, and who controls them?
For each officer who can raise qualified immunity: both prongs, in the complaint, with a pre-incident binding case, the similarities, and the differences. See How to Plead Clearly Established Law Inside a Section 1983 Complaint.
For each Monell path: the path, the facts, the municipal inference, attribution and notice, the particular injury, the moving force. Attack any theory list that defers the whole basis to discovery.
For false arrest: the seizure point, the offense elements from the statute, the facts each officer knew at that moment, the alternative offenses actually in play, and no later fact justifying the earlier arrest.
For any challenged report or affidavit: statement, contradiction, correction, materiality, author, transmission, timing.
For an amended complaint: is everything from the original that you still need repleaded? Does the motion for leave identify each defect and the exact paragraph that cures it?

Response to a motion to dismiss

List every ground the motion raises and every claim and defendant it attacks. Does the response answer each one, in the motion’s order, with jurisdictional grounds first?
Is the standard of review right, and does it cite liberal construction for a pro se pleading?
Does every factual statement cite a complaint paragraph? New facts belong in an amended complaint, not the response.
Did you object to any evidence the motion attached, and ask in the alternative for Rule 12(d) conversion?
For each claim and defendant, did you address the elements, participation, causation, injury, and both qualified immunity prongs where raised?
Did you describe the defense’s arguments as they made them, or attack a version they did not make? Did you answer their fallback theories, not just their lead one?
Does the conclusion ask for the exact ruling by count and defendant? If you ask for leave to amend in the alternative, do you say what the amendment would add?

Response to a motion for summary judgment

Did you follow the district’s exact format for responding to the movant’s fact statement, for additional facts, and for the appendix? A format failure can deem their facts admitted.
Does every admit, deny, or qualification cite a specific page of the record? An unsupported “disputed” is an admission.
Is every piece of your evidence competent for what you use it for? Personal knowledge, authentication, completeness. Is your declaration limited to what you saw and did? See How to Write a Declaration.
For each attacked element, which evidence creates a genuine dispute of material fact?
Both qualified immunity prongs, with record cites and pre-incident authority, for each defendant?
If you lack evidence because discovery was not allowed or not complete, did you file a Rule 56(d) declaration saying what facts you need, why you cannot present them, and how you would get them?
Do the fact response, the additional facts, the brief, and the proposed order all ask for the same disposition?

Motion for leave to amend

Is amendment available as of right? If not, is it Rule 15 alone, or Rule 15 plus Rule 16 good cause because a scheduling deadline passed?
Timeliness, diligence, amendment history, reason for any delay, prejudice, futility, and the conference requirement, each addressed?
Is the complete proposed pleading attached, and a redline if required? Does the motion’s summary match what the pleading actually changes?
For each cure: the prior defect, the exact new paragraph, and why it is not futile?
Did the proposed pleading drop anything you still need?

Motion for extension of time

Deadline, its source, today’s date, and the new date. Before or after the deadline, and therefore good cause or excusable neglect?
Is the reason a fact, is the time requested the time actually needed, and will this request force another one?
Prior extensions of the same deadline stated? Conference and certificate done? Consent not inferred from silence?
Proposed order, certificate of service, and local components attached?

Objection to a report and recommendation

Deadline, service method, and any extension confirmed against the docket?
Rule 72(a) or 72(b) standard, chosen correctly for what the R&R decided?
Does each numbered objection point to an exact finding and page, explain the error from the record and the law, and state the ruling the district judge should reach?
Are there any general objections, harmless points, or repetitions that dilute the dispositive ones?
Any argument or evidence not presented to the magistrate judge? Expect the waiver rule.
Are the R&R’s adverse descriptions attributed, not adopted?
Does the conclusion ask the court to reject or modify specific portions and state the concrete result by count and defendant?

Response to the defendants’ objections

Deadline, standard, and scope confirmed?
Does the response take each objection in order and answer its actual premise?
Which objections are too general to trigger review, and which raise new arguments? Waiver before merits, where the authority supports it.
Does the response defend the R&R’s reasoning, not just its result?
Does the conclusion ask the court to overrule each objection by number and adopt the R&R?

Sort what you find into five buckets

Every problem goes into exactly one bucket.

1. Fatal defects. Filing-critical under the rules and the posture: a missed deadline, a missing required attachment, a count with no facts for an element, a qualified-immunity count with no clearly-established-law unit, a fact statement in the wrong format. Fix every one of these or do not file.

2. Credible opposition arguments. Plausible defense positions that are not fatal: a fair alternative reading of the video, an arguable fallback offense, a distinction the defense can draw between your lead case and your facts. Answer each one in the filing if the answer helps you. If it does not, decide whether to narrow.

3. Factual disputes. Places where your account and a record or another witness conflict. Do not resolve credibility in your own favor by ignoring the conflict. State what each source shows and let the posture do its work. At the pleading stage, your allegations are taken as true. At summary judgment, a genuine dispute is what you want.

4. Discovery issues. Support that exists but is in the defendants’ hands: training records, prior complaints, internal communications. Frame these with a proper information-and-belief allegation or a Rule 56(d) declaration. Discovery cannot create an essential allegation you have no present basis for.

5. Style complaints. Everything that makes the filing harder to read without changing the result. Fix these last, with the self-edit pass.

Decide, then fix

For each fatal defect, the only decision is how to fix it.

For each credible opposition argument, you have three choices: strengthen the point so the argument fails, narrow the claim so the argument no longer applies, or drop the claim so the argument cannot infect the rest. Write down which one you chose and why. A theory you cannot support drags down the theories you can.

For each factual dispute, make sure the filing describes the conflict accurately and does not pretend it away.

Then fix everything in bucket order, run the review once more on the changed pages, and run the self-edit pass. A fix in one place often breaks a cross-reference in another.

Check Your Understanding

Your review of a draft complaint finds that Count II says “Defendants used excessive force” and never names which officer struck you. Which bucket?

Show answer
Fatal defect. Group pleading on an individual-capacity count means no defendant has been connected to the act, and the count will be dismissed as to each of them. Name the officer and the act.
The body-camera video is ambiguous about whether you pulled your arm back before the officer grabbed it. Which bucket, and what do you do?

Show answer
Factual dispute. Do not describe the video as showing you did not pull back, and do not omit the moment. Plead what you did from personal knowledge, state what the video shows and what it does not resolve, and let the pleading-stage standard take your allegation as true.
Your response to the motion to dismiss argues that the officer’s report is false, citing a declaration you attached. Which bucket?

Show answer
Fatal defect for a motion-to-dismiss response. A declaration is evidence outside the pleadings. Either the court ignores it or the motion is converted to summary judgment. Cite the complaint's paragraphs instead. If the complaint does not plead the falsity in the four-step pattern, the fix is an amended complaint.