pleading stripped out most of the legal fictions that had encrusted common law pleading by requiring parties to plead "ultimate facts." This means that to plead a cause of action, the pleader has to plead each element and also allege specific facts which, if proven with evidence at trial, would constitute proof of that element. Failure to provide such detail could lead to dismissal of the case if the defendant successfully demurred to the complaint on the basis that it merely stated "legal conclusions" or "evidentiary facts." Code pleading also drastically shortened the pleading process. Most of the old common law pleadings were abolished. From now on, a case required only a complaint and an answer, with an optional cross-complaint and cross-answer, and with the demurrer kept as the standard attack on improper pleadings. Instead of piling layers and layers of pleadings and averments on top of each other, a pleading that was attacked by demurrer would either be completely superseded by an amended pleading or would proceed immediately "at issue" as to the validly pleaded parts. This meant that to determine what the parties were currently fighting about, a stranger to a case would no longer have to read the entire case file from scratch, but could (in theory) look only at the most recent version of the complaint filed by the plaintiff, the defendant's most recent answer to that complaint, and any court orders on demurrers to either pleading. Code pleading was criticized because many lawyers felt that it was too difficult to fully research all the facts needed to bring a complaint before one had even initiated the action, and thus meritorious plaintiffs could not bring their complaints in time before the statute of limitations expired. Code pleading has also been criticized as promoting "hypertechnical reading of legal papers". Notice Notice pleading is the dominant form of pleading used in the United States today. In 1938, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were adopted to govern civil procedure in United States federal courts. One goal of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure was to relax the strict rules of code pleading. However, each state also has its own rules of civil procedure, which may require different, looser, or stricter rules in state court. Fact Louisiana, a state that derives its legal tradition from the Spanish and French (as opposed to English common law), employs a system of