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‘Some day someone will read what you have written, trying to find something wrong with it.’ David Mellinkoff1
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‘Some day someone will read what you have written, trying to find something wrong with it.’ David Mellinkoff1
Thinking about documents as conversations, legal texts such as contracts or regulations bring particular problems. In most cases there is an imbalance of power and expertise.
The reader of a loan agreement knows that the writer has written the document as a way of establishing control over the deal, but just has to accept it because they need the loan.
But at the same time, the writer knows that if things go wrong, the reader’s attitude to the document will change. Where previously they made optimistic inferences about the meaning of vague or ambiguous content, now they (or their lawyer) revisit in a combative mood.
Hostile reading sits alongside distracted reading, as a counter to the hopeful assumption of a cooperative friendly reader.
David Mellinkoff’s classic work on clear legal writing is hard-hitting and humorous about traditional legal writing. But he’s careful to qualify his call for plain language with the need for precision.
If you have written well, as precisely as you can, the opportunities for misunderstanding and creative misinterpretation are restricted. Precise writing is a discouragement to fault finders. You too may hit the jackpot – “plain meaning.”
1. Mellinkoff D. 1982. Legal writing: sense & nonsense. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing.