Miscellaneous

Cheryl Stephens, of Building Rapport, the plain-language blog, is a leader in the field of plain language communication, and provides training and workshops to clients all over North America. She is making a guest appearance today promoting her new book, Plain Language Legal Writing. Take it away, Cheryl.

For Legal Literacy, Use Plain Language

by Cheryl Stevens

Why bother to communicate well with clients? What problems can arise in the lawyer-client relationship?

• Your client's ability to give you proper instructions may be impeded.
• Erroneous information and missing facts can hamper your ability to obtain the appropriate remedy.
• Misunderstandings can arise between you and your client.

Delay, mistake, and embarrassment are typical consequences when client understanding is not foremost in your mind. Others include insurance claims against you and complaints to the regulatory body about you.

One good reason to write in plain language is to communicate successfully with a client who comes to you in the midst of a legal problem that of itself creates problems in understanding.

Clients suffer for many reasons:

• the stress of the problem situation itself,
• from injuries (especially of the head), or
• losing some energy in their thinking due to aging.

Literacy is relative: Some of your clients who usually perform at a higher literacy level will demonstrate what I call ?situational limited literacy.? Some factors that temporarily affect literacy include:

• stress or personal psychology
• stage in life
• lack of practice or neglect of reading

These added factors will affect client understanding in legal situations:

• pressure of the legal dispute
• intimidation by the legal office or court
• legalese

In fact, the added burden on comprehension has been labeled as a need for ?legal literacy?. And it is not easy for the average person, even business person, to acquire. Attorneys should understand that in the U.S. population these are the prose reading skills of adults:

• Unable to be tested in English:
  • 7 million could not answer simple test questions
  • 4 million could not take the test because of language barriers
• Below basic, having no more than the most simple and concrete literacy skills:
  • 30 million
• Basic, with the ability to perform simple and everyday reading activities:
  • 63 million
• Intermediate, able to perform moderately challenging literacy activities, not including grasping legal jargon:
  • 95 million
• Proficient, capable of complex and challenging literacy activities, that is, can attempt to understand legal writing:
  • 28 million

So what can you do?

Lawyers must strive to successfully communicate legal information to their clients who do not have the same information-processing skills or patterns. There are several easy ways to immediately improve your relations with clients. Consider:

• improving your listening skills
• using plain language
• varying your communication tools (not using only written documents)