Cathy Wilcox Training

T: +44 (0)1844 345519

Improving poor legal drafting

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I promised to tell you the techniques used to improve that awful passage from the GDPR.  My six principles of a user-friendly drafting style came into their own:

  1. Prefer the active voice: I’ve kept just one passive because I felt it needed to be there to convey the legal meaning.
  2. Keep sentences under 40 words with an average sentence length of under 20 words:  When you use clauses and sub-clauses, you can count each sub-clause as a separate sentence, making the new average sentence length under 10 words.
  3. Choose simple words if possible:   I’ve got rid of “pseudonymisation” for example.  I am, however, stuck with words that mean something under data protection law, for example “process” and “state of the art”.
  4. Don’t use three words if one would do:  “In order to” becomes “to” and I’ve replaced “take account of” with “consider”.  “At the time of” becomes “When”.
  5. Avoid jargon (including legal jargon):   I’ve changed “shall” into “must”.  
  6. Don’t turn perfectly good verbs into nouns:  “The determination of” has changed to “deciding”.

Worst drafting seen this week…

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Take a look at the General Data Protection Regulation, an EU regulation coming into force in May 2018. Article 25 is a 114-word cracker:

“Taking into account the state of the art, the cost of implementation and the nature, scope, context and purposes of processing as well as the risks of varying likelihood and severity for rights and freedoms of natural persons posed by the processing, the controller shall, both at the time of the determination of the means for processing and at the time of the processing itself, implement appropriate technical and organisational measures, such as pseudonymisation, which are designed to implement data-protection principles, such as data minimisation, in an effective manner and to integrate the necessary safeguards into the processing in order to meet the requirements of this Regulation and protect the rights of data subjects.”

Scoring it on my StyleWriter software gave it a “dreadful” and an “unreadable”!  A client challenged me to redraft it – easy enough, you’d think, with plenty of lists and sub-clauses. But when you take a closer look, parts of it are ambiguous – and that’s the danger with poor drafting! Anyway, it’s work in progress while I work out the legal meaning. More next week…

Does plain language editing software work?

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Yet again this week I’ve found myself using StyleWriter, the plain language editing tool, and recommending it while training.  Does it work?  Emphatically yes!  For example it’s one thing to learn in a training session that you should avoid the passive, using active verbs if possible.  Exercises help you to identify and replace passives but, when you’re under pressure back at your desk, old habits die hard.  StyleWriter is a brilliant reminder with its easy scoring and editing.  If you use it regularly, plain language will start to come naturally to you.  For more detail or a free trial go to https://www.cathywilcoxtraining.com/stylewriter/

Contact:

Cathy Wilcox Training Limited, a company registered in England under company number 08161035
Meadow End, Skittle Green
Bledlow, Princes Risborough
Bucks HP27 9PJ
T: +44 (0)1844 345519
M: +44 (0)7771 842830

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