Why hire an editor and proofreader for public-facing legal documents and notices?
If you have read a legal document of any kind, you know that legal documents need editing. Legal language is notoriously impenetrable for the untrained. It has a reputation for being slippery and duplicitous and giving common words uncommon meanings and using uncommon words in place of common ones. To an extent, this is true. “Class”—with a capital c—in a settlement agreement may have a specific meaning that “class”—with a lower case c—does not, for example. Many legal documents, including state and federal laws, can get even more confusing and complicated. This is often because the language does not follow the rules the judges and lawyers in a case agree upon.
Add in the generally low standard of written English in legal documents and we find that legal documents often fail to communicate with the public. And this just multiplies when you consider that many documents are copied and then tweaked for specific circumstances. It’s for this reason that I strongly recommend hiring an experienced legal editor or, if you aren’t comfortable with that, proofreader. (If you aren’t sure about the difference between an editor and a proofreader, please look it up.)
The difference a human editor can make
Let me show you the difference a legal editor can make. I received the postcard notice below in relation to a class action case involving certain Toyota Prius. Have a read through and see if everything makes sense.
You can download my complete proofread and enhanced edit of the postcard. Here I’d like to focus on a couple of details on the difference editing makes.
Proofread Version
You can see that the proofread clears up some of the “noise.” It eliminates the unnecessary and missing punctuation, inconsistent language, and other artifacts of a carelessly written notice. Of course, there are word count constraints on a postcard notice, but a little more concision can eliminate ambiguity. For example, the sentence on the back of the postcard that reads as follows:
i. Customer Confidence Program. A 20-year unlimited-mileage warranty enhancement, providing cost-free repair or replacement of the IPM or Inverter, starting from your Prius or Prius V’s first day in service and an appeal process for any program denials.
The most obvious point of confusion here is “an appeal process for any program denials.” What does this process belong to? The warranty enhancement? And what do they mean by “program denials”? Moreover, with what appears to be a serial list (“providing” and “starting”), “an appeal process” is not parallel. Overall, it’s a clunky sentence and just a few small tweaks can make it much easier to understand. My proofread simply isolates the two list items, changes the gerund forms to simple present, and makes the information about the appeal process a separate sentence. Keeping “Inverter” in capital case is debatable—because it is a defined term in the settlement agreement, I did not change it in the proofread version.
Edited Version
An edited version of this sentence, however, addresses the ambiguity of “an appeal process for any program denials” with more care. It turns out that there are appeals for specific things in this case that the phrase “an appeal process” does not say. In this case, the appeal refers to appealing the denial of the free repair or replacement of the IPM or inverter. Thus, the edited sentence says this explicitly: “If your free repair or replacement is denied, you may appeal the decision.” While this adds some words, the more concise description of the appeal allows the following sentence to be shortened.
The difference as I see it between the proofread and the edited version of this notice is that the proofread merely cleans up the document and makes it look a little more professional. The edited version removes ambiguity and conveys essential information in the most efficient ways possible. Importantly, the edited version does this without introducing vocabulary that is more likely to be misunderstood.
Legal language peeves
Finally, some little pet peeves about legal notices.
- Opt-out v. opt out. “Opt out” is a verb.
- “Timely submit.” This is just an awkward clunky phrase. I’m sure someone out there thinks it sounds professional. It doesn’t. “Submit on time” or “submit by the deadline” will do.
- Class counsel’s award without the zeros. $19.6 million isn’t so much, is it? $19,600,000.00 on the other hand seems like an outrageous amount. Counsel typically asks for a 1/3 of any settlement amount (including those who settle accident claims) and in bigger claims cases they don’t want you to register just how much they’re getting and how little of it they’re spending on editing.
- “At the settlement website.” Does anyone even say this?
- “Point your cellphone camera at.” Maybe this is supposed to sound casual, but let’s be like Colombo and keep to the facts, ma’am.
- “Obtain.” Do you obtain your eggs at Costco? I prefer to get mine there.
- “re.” Someone is too busy to write “about.”