Legal English? (take III)

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Eric Dunn questioned a couple of my suggestions:

<<one of the skills in writing up contracts is to write in language 
that agrees with RFP and requirements but is subtly different and can 
be interpreted more leniently by the supplier.>>

It's certainly true that a good lawyer will always try to frame a 
contract so as to favor their client. But the good ones don't try to do 
this by linguistic trickery; they try to do it by framing clearly 
favorable terms for their client that the other party will be willing 
to accept.

I also said that "the legal profession as a whole could benefit from a 
large number of skilled editors", to which Eric replied: <<But what 
would they allow you to edit. I doesn't matter what an editor says a 
particular text means or that their rewrite is identical or clearer 
than the passage being replaced. The opinion that matters is that of a 
judge or jury. If you edit the text, it no longer has a legal 
definition and is open to being rechallenged in court.>>

On the contrary. Just as scientists write in highly technical and 
impenetrable jargon that a skilled scientific editor (me, for instance) 
can reframe more clearly in correct scientific style, so lawyers write 
in highly technical and impenetrable jargon that a skilled legal editor 
(not me by any stretch of the imagination) can improve. In point of 
fact, publishers of law books often have skilled editorial staff who do 
just this; I competed for my first job against two such editors and 
beat them because I knew the subject (science) better. I wouldn't have 
beaten them if the subject had been law.

The key here is subject matter knowledge: If you know the jargon, you 
can spot when it's being misused by mistake. If you know the rhetorical 
style and usage, you can work with that style and usage to produce 
clearer and more effective prose. If you know the language, you can at 
least ask whether something is really correct and leave it to the 
author to figure out whether it needs correction. That's true of any 
subject matter and any form of technical editing.

For that matter, the subject matter expertise isn't always necessary. 
I've edited several contracts for my former employer that were then 
reviewed for correctness by a lawyer, and in each case, the lawyer 
largely accepted my edits as useful and as improvements. I would never 
consider doing such work without that legal oversight, but with the 
lawyer having the final say, I was willing to at least try.

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)