Commas with short quotations. Use a comma to introduce a short quotation, unless you incorporate it into a sentence. Colons introduce a series or long quotations, but they don't go between a verb and its object or a preposition and its object. Although dashes, commas and parentheses set off material that interrupts a sentence, they differ in the emphasis they give to that material. Commas tend to be neutral.
Parentheses tend to play down the material, and dashes tend to emphasize the material.
Perhaps you're still unconvinced such rules are crucial to good legal writing. Richard Rhodes would be proud. She has also taught writing and literature at the Johnson County and Metropolitan community colleges. Carolina Academic Press, 1994.