A legal style guide is essential for any organisation that produces legal documents, whether contracts, briefs, or other legal materials. It ensures that an organisation’s legal documents are consistent and adhere to specific standards, which is essential for maintaining clear communications, legal accuracy, and credibility.

In this post, we’ll discuss some steps you can take to create a comprehensive legal style guide.

Define the purpose and scope of the guide

The first step in developing a legal style guide is to define its purpose and scope.

Regarding the guide’s scope, you’d determine what types of documents (e.g. customer agreements) it’ll cover and what style elements you’ll include. For example, you can ask yourself questions like the following:

  • Will it cover grammar and punctuation, formatting, or specific legal terms?
  • Will it include guidelines for how contracts need to be laid out?

Answering these questions will help you create a roadmap for developing your style guide.

Research existing style guides

Many style guides are available that you can review as a starting point. Consider finding these legal style guides online, such as Adobe’s Legal Department Style Guide. They provide valuable insights into industry-standard practices and conventions; you can use those guides as a reference when developing your style guide.

Identify essential stakeholders

Developing a legal style guide requires input and collaboration from multiple stakeholders, including legal professionals, writers, editors, and other personnel.

The point is to involve your stakeholders in the guide’s development process. Their involvement ensures the guide reflects the needs and preferences of all parties involved in producing legal documents.

Develop style guidelines

The next step is to develop your style guidelines. These guidelines should cover all aspects of legal writing, including:

  • grammar and punctuation,
  • formatting,
  • citation style, and
  • specific legal terms.

Remember to draft guidelines that are easy to understand and use and reflect your organisation’s tone and voice. To this point, it helps to consult your organisation’s brand guidelines.

Incorporate plain language

Using plain language is an essential element of effective legal writing.

Plain language involves using simple, straightforward language that’s easy for readers to understand. Incorporating plain language guidelines into your legal style guide can help ensure that your legal documents are accessible to a broader audience, including those with limited English proficiency or low literacy levels.

Plain language guidelines may include tips on using short sentences and paragraphs, avoiding legal jargon, and using active voice. Incorporating these guidelines into your legal style guide ensures that all legal documents your organisation produces are written in plain language.

Apply legal design principles

Legal design is the practice of using design principles to create legal documents that are visually appealing and easy to navigate. It uses typography, colour, and layout to create more user-friendly and engaging documents.

Incorporating legal design principles into your legal style guide ensures that all legal documents your organisation produce are visually appealing and easy to navigate. Relying on these principles is especially helpful for long or complex legal documents.

Create the style guide document

Once you have developed your style guidelines, it’s time to compile them into a comprehensive style guide document.

This document should be easily accessible to all members of the organisation and should include clear instructions on how to use the style guide.

Educate staff and promote adherence

Developing a legal style guide is the first step in ensuring consistent legal writing across an organisation. However, educating all staff members on the style guide’s content and promoting adherence to its guidelines is vital. You can do so through training sessions, regular reminders, and ongoing monitoring of legal documents.

Actions you can take next

  • Ensure clear and consistent communication in your organisation by asking us to draft a legal style guide for you.
  • Comply with ICT laws and processes by asking us to redesign your legal information.
  • Increase sales and strengthen client engagement with your legal documents by asking us to redesign your commercial contracts.
  • Stay updated with the latest plain language and legal design techniques by joining our clear communications programme.