Plain language law is a growing movement, which brings enormous benefits. Simple law is part of it. Do readers understand your documents? Simple language in legal documents (like contracts, policies, codes and legislation) has become a consumer right, a legal requirement and a competitive advantage. Poor legal drafting has become a liability. Create clear legal documents and close the gap between you and the readers. We offer various services in line with our view that compliance is a process.
We help people:
- comply with laws that require plain language,
- manage the risks associated with legal documents,
- draft well-written legislation and other legal documents, and
- communicate clearly with their readers.
Plain Language Compliance Process
Our seminars, workshops, webinars or executive briefings build your awareness of plain legal language.
We review your existing documents, policies, practices and style guides. Identify gaps and action items. Plan the action to be taken by whom and by when.
We convert and draft new documents. If necessary, we develop a style guide or glossary. We train people to ensure that they use plain language going forward.
We can review your new documents and providing ongoing training on plain legal language to ensure you continue to comply.
Next Steps to Take
- Know why plain legal language is important by reading more about it, getting a guide or attending a workshop to convince you why plain legal language is important.
- Learn how to write in plain legal language by attending a workshop.
- Ensure consistency between the legal documents in your organisation with a legal style guide.
- Convert a document of yours into plain language.
Know the state of your current documents by doing an audit or review of them.
Explain the legal terms that you use to your customers by drafting a glossary of legal terms.
Ensure that a speaker of another language can understand your documents by translating English documents to other languages. Other Afrikaans documents to English.
Ensure that functionally illiterate consumers can understand legal documents by converting plain documents into simple (or grassroots) language.
Why Choose Us
We offer services not only as experts on writing but with the benefit of being lawyers as well. For legal documents, you need to be both a legal and a language expert. We draft all our contracts in plain language. We are a member of Clarity International, an organisation that promotes plain legal language.
We have delivered and managed plain language conversion projects for many organisations, including a major banking institution.
What Clients Say
The agreement is nothing short of revolutionary.
This is the best course ever! Where were you two weeks ago when we spent a whole day drafting a letter to our clients
I just wanted to say a quick thank you from my side for your recent training sessions…. We’ve received very positive feedback yet again
Our Experience
- Trained hundreds of people on plain legal language in both public and private workshops.
- Completed a successful CPA plain language project for one of the major banks. It involved (amongst other things) converting hundreds of documents relating to financial services into plain and understandable language.
- Assisted various organisations (from dual listed multinationals to start-ups) in various industries, including legal, healthcare, telecommunications, financial services and retail.
- Drafted hundreds of legal documents in plain language.
- Converted hundreds of existing documents into plain language for clients. Undertaken simple language conversions as part of a corporate social investment programme. Converted the ADR clause in King III™ to plain language.
- In particular, we have extensive experience with legal documents.
- Created audio material for low-literate consumers or consumers from oral traditions.
- Created simple legal educational documents for low-literate consumers.
- Project managed a translation process that uses jobless matriculants, as encouraged by Government.
- Considerable experience in plain language needs surrounding legal documents about property and family in subsidized housing.
- Audited gender equality in processes.
Interested?
If you are interested, please complete the form on the right or enquire now. We will contact you to find out more about your requirements and give you a quote.