Plain Legal Language Writing

By law, UClA documents have to be clearly worded; by right, all legal documents should be clearly worded to ensure that all parties have equal and ready understanding of the content.

Most Legal Practices Now Recognise The Marketing Advantages of Adopting A Plain English Style When:

  • Tendering For Work

  • Appealing To Clients

  • Drafting Documents

Course Outline

Course Designed For

lawyers who recognise the limitations of legal jargon and want to adopt a clearer and more effective style of communication.

Aim

Our courses we show delegates how current legal drafting frequently contravenes all principles of plain language, and we practise clear writing techniques by looking specifically at:

Course Outline

  • Sentence Construction, Weighting And Length

  • Signals And Constructions Which Drive The Reader Through The Text

  • Word Choice, Register, And Legalese – Answering The Critics Of Plain Language

  • Redundant Words And Phrases

  • Passives, Nominalisations And Negatives

All the writing principles we present and practise on the course are based on recent readability research.

Our Legal Trainer

Our legal trainer is a practising solicitor and author of many published articles on plain legal language. He has many years hands-on experience dealing with legal documents and legal groups and enjoys the challenge of convincing lawyers that they can write legal documents in language that is clear in its legal meaning and easily understandable, and without archaic, obscure words.

Costs

This course can run over one or two days. On the two-day programme, participants have the opportunity to work on their own and on company documents.

In-company, for groups of six or more participants, we charge £395 per person per day, with a lower daily participant rate for larger groups.

We can also work with you one-to-one on your documents at an hourly rate of £85.

If you would like to book a plain legal writing course, or talk to us about your documents, please Contact Us for further information.

See what you can learn from the course