Plain language resources

Presented at Clarity2016. Plain language offers the revolutionary potential to change the way society understands conflict. Shifting from legal expertise in solving disputes to citizen's management of everyday interactions will minimize the anxiety, cost and consequences of legal issues.

As a component of Preventative Lawyering, lawyers who use plain language in their relationships with clients, break down the intimidation and confusion that legal terminology causes. Building the capacity of clients to understand and confidently participate in legal issues, lawyers empower people to take early, simple steps to reduce conflict and remove the fear and shame of legal disputes.

Sharing knowledge of legal terms and processes has the potential to bring clients into an active conversation about legal resolution. Shifts in medical and financial practice have transformed the expert-client relationship into a decision-making partnership. Law has not yet seen the same sharing of expertise. Plain language principles in all client communication would empower people to be active in their legal disputes, pursuing early resolution.

Sharing control of the language of law could transform the way society talks about conflict, opening up new possibilities for resolution.

Presented at Clarity2016. A roundtable discussion at PLAIN’s Vancouver conference inspired me to continue to explore why law students who are taught to use plain language are so eager to use legalese as soon as they are in practice (or before). My research has uncovered a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle influences that keep the plain-language community from making more progress, especially with new lawyers and other new professionals. This session explores those influences, introduces a variety of strategies to overcome them, and invites participants to strategize about their own solutions. The session will draw on research in our own field, as well as research in psychology, rhetoric, consumer behavior, and other areas.

Delegates will get an understanding of why people entering a new profession are so committed to using legalese or similar profession-specific jargon. Armed with this understanding, delegates will learn about strategies to overcome these barriers. Finally, delegates will have the opportunity to brainstorm about other strategies that might be effective in more specialized situations.

Presented at Clarity2016. While we suffer incomprehensibility one document (or web screen) at a time, most complexity problems are ‘systemic’ in nature. Effective solutions must therefore address systemic, macro issues if the clarity sought in individual documents is to be sustained across an organization and over time. Charlene Haykel has developed such a process. Macrosimplification™ applies the principles and techniques for simplifying a single document to hundreds of such documents or screen pages across product and division lines of large organizations. Macrosimplification™ builds leaner, more effective communications around core content, typically reducing content volume by 20–30%. It also achieves sustainable clarity by tackling, head-on, organizational issues of staffing, training, culture and cost. Haykel will use case studies to show how a 20–30% reduction in word count consistently results in more manageable, clear and comprehensible, and cost-effective communications. She will lead delegates through a discussion of the practical challenges of improving language and content access at their companies and agencies. She’ll show them how, when dealt with on a macro level, communications can be clarified once and for all.

Presented at Clarity2016. Have you ever wished you had evidence on how the public perceives legal communication in your country? If so, then this session is for you. You’ll be among the first to see new empirical evidence discussing what the public wants when they read legal information. This new study, which is a follow-up to The Public Speaks: An Empirical Study of Legal Communication, targets responses from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. The study will gather data on such things as using legal terms of art, overusing jargon, and many other hallmarks of traditional legal language. This data will then be compared by and between countries, which will provide much needed evidence to support Clarity’s mission. Come find out what we can learn from this new evidence.

Presented at Clarity2016. Moving to live and work in a new country involves finding out a great deal of information that locals simply take for granted. New Zealand organisations are very good at providing that information, however the information provided is not always written or presented in the most user friendly way.

Keeping it Clear – a new guide written and produced by Immigration New Zealand - aims to address this by providing organisations with tips to follow when they are communicating with people new to New Zealand.

Tips include keeping language short and simple, active and direct and avoiding idioms and ‘kiwi-isms’ that newcomers may not understand.

We don’t realise that there are more than 25,000 idioms in the English language and we liberally scatter them through most information. These are extremely difficult for new speakers of English to understand.

They can be the difference between a newcomer acting on information or ignoring it.

Even the Kiwi expressions that we think nothing of, such as “bring a plate”, “box of birds” or “across the ditch” can have migrants, even from other English speaking countries, scratching their heads in confusion. Yeah, Nah… Absolutely!

This session will introduce delegates to the guide and cover off some of the more important tips.

Presented at Clarity2016. Lawyers have great skills: knowledge, rigour, eloquence, etc. They have traditionally fostered a hierarchical relationship with their clients by providing expert knowledge difficult, if not impossible, to assess by laypeople. At the same time, in North America, trials are vanishing. Costs are too high, delays too long, processes too complex. Increasing numbers of citizens go to trial without counsel. They question relations of authority in all areas of society. They are better educated and have access to more information. They do not want to be told what to do.

In this context, lawyers need to add to their classical skills by fostering relations of partnership and collaboration with their clients. Plain language in law is one essential skill required of legal counsels to convey the rules of law, thus making it possible for clients to make their own informed decisions.

How is plain language essential to students of law and lawyers? Why do judges need to adopt plain language when addressing parties? How is the legal profession to adapt to these social changes, if not, by making law more accessible? How can plain language adepts convince colleagues of the importance of communicating law clearly and effectively?

Presented at Clarity2016. Information accessibility and inclusiveness is at the heart of plain language. Yet for people with disabilities, the language used to communicate about and with them often fails to uphold these important communication traits. In this presentation, we will introduce what people-first language is and show why it matters for creating clarity and inclusiveness. We’ll illustrate how people-first language aligns with international plain language standards and provide tips for using this writing technique.

Presented at Clarity2016. On meeting a stranger we have one fundamental question – are they friend or foe? And everything that follows is based on the decision we make.

For this reason, insurers, banks and financial planners need to avoid an overture to potential customers that creates suspicion. These interactions ­are generally characterised by obfuscation and, therefore, confusion, and lead to misunderstandings and misplaced customer expectations.

Obscure language promotes doubt, and doubt leads to hesitation and fear of engagement, which, in turn, creates suspicion. If you accept that trust is the most valuable brand asset any insurer, bank or financial planner can own then the marketing case for plain English contracts is self-evident. After all, it takes years for a brand to build trust but only a whiff of suspicion to erode it.

Plain English consumer contracts present information that people can understand and act on with confidence. They can put your brand beyond all reasonable doubt and, therefore, beyond the mortal threat that suspicion poses.

Drawing on his 15 years of experience as a plain English editor and writer, and using real examples of his recent work with Australia’s biggest banks, insurance companies and financial institutions like CGU Insurance and NAB, Andrew Pegler will present the compelling marketing case for plain English contracts.

Presented at Clarity2016. Going to university involves challenges for students as they are educated within a specialised academic community. They need to understand the key strategies to become part of that community, and be able to produce academic writing.

At the same time, this process — academic literacy — will allow them to be part of a scientific and professional community in the future (Radloff and de la Harpe, 2000). For this reason, many universities around the world have introduced writing programmes and workshops, understanding that teaching them to write specialised texts is essential.

In 2011, the Faculty of Law at the Catholic University of Valparaiso, Chile (PUCV) included four compulsory courses in linguistic skills, called ‘Strategies’. These courses are offered during the first four years of the programme, and one of them is ‘Strategies for producing a written discourse’. The course primarily aims to teach students to develop strategies for writing clear text that can be understood by the varied audiences they will encounter as lawyers.

Presented at Clarity2016. Each year the Language Council of Sweden awards a prize, the Plain Swedish Crystal, to a public authority or a local municipality for its plain language efforts. Each year’s Crystal has a different theme. In 2016 the theme was “plain language in e-services”. Of course, an e-service must be well-functioning technically. But it is also important that the keywords are consistent and that the instructions are comprehensible to the user. Buttons, arrows and other symbols must be clear, and the tone must be friendly. Looking through processes behind the services nominated for this year’s Crystal, we found several key factors that were common to them all:

• Focus on the users´ needs
• Knowledge from earlier experiences about what users find difficult
• Close co-operation between experts, lawyers, writers, and developers
• Short texts – only the necessary content
• Consistent and plain terminology

This presentation will show you examples from three successful e-services, and look into the work behind them. After the presentation you are invited to discuss best practices for comprehensive and clear e-services.

Presented at Clarity2016. In this session, I’ll talk about my experiences of trying to help the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to improve our legal writing. I’ve been working on it since 2006 in a number of different ways, and have had a lot of opportunities to observe what not to do. We’re now trying to apply some of what we’ve learned to approach the task differently. I’m going to talk a little about the various obstacles, systemic problems, and other hindrances we’ve faced over the years. Then, looking forward and drawing from those experiences, I’ll outline how our new approach deals creatively with some of these seemingly impossible labours – without the need for herculean strength or huge resources. Anyone interested in improving technical writing in an organisational setting will find much to relate to, and may also get some fresh ideas to try in their organisations.

Presented at Clarity2016. Most of New Zealand’s legislation was made available on the NZ Legislation website in 2008. Our goal of making legislation accessible to all was finally realised! Or so we thought.

We now know that was just the beginning. Access is more than simply being able to obtain a copy of legislation, or writing it using plain language. Legislation is no longer the domain of experts. Today, anyone who has access to the Internet can use it. We need to make legislation available in a way that meets the needs and expectations of those users, and reflects their understanding of it.

The shift to online legislation provides an opportunity to consider what effective communication means when we take advantage of today’s technology, and plan for tomorrow’s.

This session will focus on:

• the opportunities that are available when legislation is viewed as an electronic data-set, rather than words printed in a series of books:
• methods for communicating information to people who do not know they need it:
• how we can simplify a vast, complex, and interrelated statute book:
• the Access to Subordinate Instruments Project (http://www.pco.parliament.govt.nz/asip/):
• how more effective communication and better document design may lead to better legislative outcomes.

Presented at Clarity2016. When Una Jagose, Solicitor-General, began practice as a lawyer the Acts Interpretation Act urged:

“Every Act, and every provision or enactment thereof, shall be deemed remedial, whether its immediate purport is to direct the doing of anything Parliament deems to be for the public good, or to prevent or punish the doing of anything it deems contrary to the public good, and shall accordingly receive such fair, large, and liberal construction and interpretation as will best ensure the attainment of the object of the Act and of such provision or enactment according to its true intent, meaning, and spirit”

Now, the Interpretation Act says:

“The meaning of an enactment must be ascertained from its text and in the light of its purpose.”

The NZ statute book is being overhauled in favour of plain language. Have other parts of the legal system followed suit? Una will outline her ambition for clarity as Government’s chief advocate and adviser and chief executive of Crown Law.

Presented at Clarity2016. The value of effective communication is well recognised in the provision of written information about the law and its mechanisms. So is the importance of procedural fairness, including perceptions by court users that they have been treated with respect. Less well understood in the Australian context is the role that verbal communication plays - not only in the experience of its users, but their ability to comply with the law. Drawing on a range of Centre for Innovative Justice (CIJ) projects, Director Rob Hulls will highlight lessons from work to increase compliance with family violence protection orders, as well as research regarding the experiences of criminal justice system users with an Acquired Brain Injury (ABI). Exploring common themes, Rob will highlight the way in which ‘listenability’ has a crucial role when compliance with the law is involved. Going beyond comprehension to communication which mitigates the effects of stress and other impairment, ‘listenability’ becomes vital to access to justice and community safety. Outlining findings from further research in this area, the CIJ will seek to use this work to help users of the justice system navigate its complexities and comply more effectively with the law.