legal copy

CONTRACT LANGUAGE DETRACTS

One of the ways many people try to make their business writing sound more impressive is to try to make it a bit lawyerly. The legal community has long had a unique style and syntax that’s meant to create clarity, but that is often far more effective at obfuscating the meaning. I suspect it may be an attempt to ensure the ongoing demand for the profession, because one generally needs to hire an attorney to understand something another attorney has written.

But I’m not here to offend attorneys (nor to incur their wrath). I’m here to help companies and other organizations communicate more clearly, and one way they can do that is to stop trying to write like attorneys.

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