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Improving poor legal drafting

June 19, 2017 by Cathy Wilcox

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”.

Filed Under: Effective legal drafting, Plain English, Plain Language, StyleWriter

Variety makes for happy trainers!

May 13, 2016 by Cathy Wilcox

Cathy’s had a lovely week, with a real mix of training delivery:

Three courses for lawyers at different global firms – one on “white-water drafting” (the scary bits of legal drafting), one on getting the right approach (risk allocation etc) and one on client-friendly drafting.

Three business services training sessions for law firms in London and in Newcastle, two on good business writing and one for senior managers on writing to influence.

Add in some one-to-one coaching slots for business services staff at yet another law firm and you have the perfect week as far as Cathy’s concerned!

Thank you to all our clients, and enjoy the weekend.

Filed Under: Effective business writing, Effective legal drafting, latest news, Plain English, Plain Language, Report writing

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