Legal Research, Writing, and Advocacy (LRWA) Practice Exam 2026 – Complete All-in-One Guide for Success!

Pleadings under Rule 7(a) are the filings the federal system recognizes at the pleading stage. The rule names exactly what can be filed: a complaint, an answer to the complaint, a counterclaim, a crossclaim, a third-party claim, and responses to those claims—an answer to a counterclaim, an answer to a crossclaim, an answer to a third-party claim—and a reply to a counterclaim if the court orders. The term you’re seeing in the question, “rejoinders,” does not appear anywhere in that list. Rejoinders come from older common-law pleading and aren’t part of the modern FRCP vocabulary.

So, the item described by that term isn’t one of the pleadings explicitly listed under Rule 7(a). The other options fit the FRCP framework: the initial complaint is the starting pleading, an answer responds to the complaint, and a court-ordered reply to a counterclaim is consistent with the rule’s allowance for a reply in that context.