Back in 2021, I worked in a team to simplify the terms and conditions for a global corporate. The principles agreed with the client include:
- using digits not words for numbers
- conversational tone ie ‘you’ as provider and ‘we’ as client
- must or will, instead of shall (due to its ambiguity in translation)
- removing/minimising defined terms.
When I see a word with a capital such as Agreement, Parties, or the definition of an ordinary word like ‘month’ or year’, my skin starts to crawl a little. In my lawyer masterclass, I ask lawyers to rewrite a single clause to simplify it – and often they make it shorter by creating new definitions. But some of their defined terms are only used in that clause so are utterly pointless and make it much harder to read.
Define Sparingly
Using defined terms seems to have become hard-wired as a necessity.
For example, in a masterclass on report writing for delay experts, I created a fictional opening to an expert report used for court proceedings:
“I, Robert Tulkinghorn LLB(Hons), MSc, PhD, FRICS, FCIArb, have been retained by Instructing solicitors Kenge and Carboy LLP (“Instructing solicitors”), solicitors for Jarndyce Contractors Ltd (“Jarndyce” or “the Respondent”) to produce this report on quantum in relation to claims and disputes between Chancery Lane Joint Venture Ltd and Greener Energy (“Claimant” or “Joint Venture”) and Jarndyce.”
My audience of delay experts failed to see anything wrong with it. They argued that is was a perfectly normal opening paragraph.
Yet this is exactly this sort of writing that brings professional writing into disrepute.
What should you do?
You may not be a well-loved author like Phillip Pullman, an orator like Mahatma Ghandi, or a TV presenter like David Attenborough, but you still need to have the same impact with a wide-ranging audience.
We need to talk like we are talking to children.
