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Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
How will it help you?
When conducting a plain language document audit it is important to record the findings of the audit or review to provide you with the information that you will need, when you need it. It is important that practical action items are identified as part of the ...
Posted in Documents, Plain Language, Register Templates | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
The readability statistics of a document can be very interesting and can tell you a lot about a document. They are also very useful for determining whether a document is in plain language or not? Let us look at an example. Here are the readability statistics for a document before ...
Posted in Guidance, Plain Language | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
How is plain language defined in South African law? What is the standard that one should use to decide whether a document is in plain language? What is plain and understandable language?
Although reference to plain and understandable language is made in various pieces of legislation, only very few expand on ...
Posted in Consumer Protection, Guidance, Plain Language | No Comments »
Sunday, November 29th, 2009
Horrible documents cross my computer screen every day. The same old templates get re-used and circulated. Why are they horrible?
They are often too long - everyone complains about long documents. They are often badly structured - a really important commercial term (like "the fees") is hidden on page fifty ...
Posted in Agreements, Goods or Services, Guidance, Plain Language, Technology | No Comments »
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
In a previous article we wrote about how the draft King Report recommended that an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) clause be incorporated in all contracts. They recommended a clause, which we then converted into plain language. We were delighted to hear that the King committee accepted our plain language version ...
Posted in Agreements, Goods or Services, Guidance, IT Governance, Outsourcing, Plain Language | No Comments »
Friday, September 18th, 2009
SAFM (Word of Mouth show) recently interviewed Andrew Weeks on plain language and the law. Lawyers are said to be one of the worst culprits when it comes to using language that is verbose, but is there a reason for this?
Caution: The audio files on Michalsons can be large. Most ...
Posted in Plain Language, Podcasts | No Comments »
Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
There are various laws that require the use of plain legal language. In this article we focus on legislation that requires plain language communications. In our experience, people either don't know or tend to ignore the plain language requirements when drafting documents. If any of the following legislation applies to ...
Posted in Consumer Protection, Guidance, Plain Language | No Comments »
Thursday, April 30th, 2009
The President of South African signed the Consumer Protection Act Act on 24 April 2009 and it was published in the government gazette on 29 April 2009. The official statement made by the Department of Trade and Industry is worth reading.
I attended a presentation on the Consumer Protection Act recently. ...
Posted in Alerts, Consumer Protection, Guides, Plain Language | 6 Comments »
Friday, April 24th, 2009
When converting legal documents into plain language (or plain legal language) there are some quick wins - some easy changes that you can make that make a big difference. Converting a legal document into plain language takes time, but these quick wins can be done reasonably quickly and result in ...
Posted in Plain Language | 1 Comment »
Saturday, March 7th, 2009
We have always recommended alternative dispute resolution (ADR) clauses in contracts, especially when it comes to technology related agreements. It is usually better not to resolve disputes of a technical nature through the South African courts.
In the Draft Report for Corporate Governance for South Africa (King III or King 3) ...
Posted in Agreements, Goods or Services, IT Governance, Plain Language, Technology | No Comments »
