Lesson 04 - Legal Professions

Judge: The charge here is theft of frozen chickens. Are you the defendant?

Defendant: No, sir, I'm the guy who stole the chickens.

1. Pre-reading: You have already come across several texts on legal topics. How would you describe legal language? What are its typical features? Name some examples of legal vocabulary or phrases. Complete the mind-map below with features and examples of legal English.

here are some examples of legal English: action, stare decisis, a lawsuit, tort, damages, defendant, nuisance, I do solemnly swear, aforesaid, reasonable, The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth

2. Read Text 1 and explain the key terms - legalese, plain language movement, principle of accessibility.

Text 1:

They say that lawyers have a language all of their own. The language lawyers use when speaking and writing contains many words, phrases and writing styles which are specific to the profession. These words are known as ‘legalese’. Legalese often confuses people who are non-lawyers because they simply are not familiar with the language. In some cases, lawyers, judges and the courts have even found it difficult to understand the real meaning of words or documents because of legalese. Clients of law firms also have problems figuring out whether a legal advice or a contract is actually helpful to them because they cannot really understand the contents.

In many English speaking jurisdictions like the United States and Australia, this problem was recognized about twenty years ago. Lawyers, various bar associations and governments agreed that a change was needed. This gave rise to what is known as the Plain Language Movement. This is a philosophy that believes that documents of all kinds (including legal documents) should be written in a way so that a person can understand them easily the first time they read them. This means eliminating legal expressions which have a plain English equivalent, avoiding Latin expressions and archaisms, using short sentences and headings. People are entitled to understand the documents that bind them or state their rights. This is known as the principle of accessibility.

Your explanation:

legalese ….......................................

plain language movement ………………………………..

principle of accessibility ……………………………………..

3. What is your opinion: What was expected from the Plain Language Movement? Were the expectations fulfilled? Was the Plain Language Movement successful? Were there any unexpected results?

Have you considered any of the issues from the table below? Do you think that the statements are true or false?

expectations – after having adopted plain language... true/false - guess true/false - text

law firms will lose their profits because of plain language

plain language will not create binding documents

using plain language will make legal documents less authoritative

plain language will save time

plain language will be taught at universities

documents in plain language will be less precise