Legalese for Non-lawyers

If you were ever one of the few people to brave the fine print of a legal document, whether it's a credit card offer, lease, mortgage document, or something else, you've probably found yourself immersed in a language that feels as foreign as any you've heard. One frustration I've heard repeated about the legal profession is that lawyers too often write (or talk) in "legalese."

This frustration is understandable, since most clients aren't trained in law, much less legalese. Attorneys eat, sleep, and breathe law for three years during law school, followed by a work life that can reinforce that immersion experience and leave clients at a loss for what, exactly, their lawyer is saying. To be sure, most of us attempt to bridge this gap. However, finding a lawyer who can translate "legalese" to more "lay" speech is no sure-fire proposition.

Why do lawyers keep using it, then, if clients prefer more "plain English" approaches?

The answer may be that many legal theories and concepts rely on specialized definitions. Just as a line cook at a restaurant may refer to "dropping" meat on the grill to mean putting an order of meat down to cook, lawyers may refer to "Res Ipsa" as a shorthand for res ipsa loquitor, a concept that in some cases, negligence speaks for itself and can be implied by the circumstances surrounding it, rather than having to be explicitly proved.

This legal concept isn't as important to this article as the concept that sometimes terms acquire an industry-specific meaning. Using those terms can be shorter than writing out the full explanation. The downside is that even if a lawyer seeks to use "plain English," he or she then runs the risk that the "plain English" approach won't protect the client as comprehensively as the "term of art."

Thus, the "plain English" legal movement relies on notions of fairness to bridge potential gaps. If a lawyer drafts a contract to say that John Smith agrees to sell 123 Main Street to Mary Jones, that lawyer is using fairness as a fall back position to make sure that the language of "grants, assigns, conveys and sells" will be "read into" the more plain phrasing.

When identifying a lawyer to represent you, it can be important to find someone who can understand and listen to your needs and keep you informed by bridging the gap between "legalese" and plain English. But the importance of finding someone who can also use the correct terms of art at the proper times is also important. As in many cases, the true mark of success in this regard often lies in striking the appropriate balance.