Legal Research

"Plain English and Modern Legal Drafting: Part 1"

This post was written by Wayne Schiess: "Part 1: What is plain English--really?

All legal writing should be appropriate for its audience--it should speak to the reader in words, sentences, and forms the intended reader can understand. Thus, transactional legal writing--legal drafting--should be appropriate for its audience: the parties to the transaction and, if they are represented by counsel, their lawyers. But in many transactions, particularly consumer transactions, the parties are not represented by counsel. The transactions are between nonlawyers without counsel or between a sophisticated party, who dictates the terms, and a nonlawyer consumer. Those nonlawyer consumers need plain English. To meet their needs, I offer this broad description of plain-English legal drafting:

• Plain English is a form of English that can be read and understand by the typical nonlawyer.

Here are some specific traits of plain-English legal drafting:..."

Continue reading this interesting post and reach Parts 2 & 3 by clicking on the author's name.

Source: Legalwriting.net Blog, 21 June 2010. Copyright 2008. Reproduced with permission of the author

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on June 29, 2010 (boomark / email).