Most people sign documents they have not fully read, and the usual explanation — that nobody has the patience — is only half true. The other half is that a great deal of legal drafting is written in a register that discourages reading: long sentences, buried subjects, and vocabulary that has not been current since the nineteenth century.
What plain language actually means
It is not simplification, and it is not writing for children. A plain-language document is one where a reader with a reasonable education can find what they need, understand it on first reading, and act on it. That is a functional test, not a stylistic preference — and it can be measured by asking real readers to answer questions about the text.
The five changes that do most of the work
Put the subject first, and keep it near its verb. Most impenetrable clauses are impenetrable because thirty words separate who from does what. “The Tenant shall, in the event that the Landlord has given notice pursuant to clause 7.2, vacate…” becomes “If the Landlord gives notice under clause 7.2, the Tenant must move out…”
Use “must” for obligations. “Shall” is ambiguous in ordinary usage and has produced a genuinely surprising amount of litigation about whether a duty was mandatory. “Must” is unambiguous. “May” grants permission. Keep them distinct and use them consistently.
Break the sentence at the semicolons. If a clause contains three conditions, make it three numbered sub-clauses. Lists are easier to read and easier to argue about precisely, which is what both sides want.
Prefer verbs to noun forms. “Make an application” is “apply”. “Give consideration to” is “consider”. Each substitution removes words and a layer of abstraction.
Define terms where they are used, not only in a schedule. A reader on page eleven should not have to return to page two to learn what a capitalised word means.
Where the old phrasing is doing real work
This is the part that plain-language enthusiasm often skips, and it matters if you are editing a document rather than writing an article about documents.
Some phrases are terms of art: they have acquired a settled meaning through decades of judicial interpretation. “Best endeavours”, “without prejudice”, “time is of the essence” and “force majeure” are not decorative. Replacing them with a friendlier paraphrase does not make the obligation clearer; it makes it novel, and a novel phrase has no case law behind it. The safe approach is to keep the term and explain it in a note, rather than to translate it away.
The same applies to deliberate repetition. Legal drafting often repeats a noun where ordinary prose would use “it” or “they”. That is not clumsiness — it removes the ambiguity about which of three parties the pronoun refers to. Editing it out reads better and drafts worse.
Structure carries more than sentences
Readers navigate documents before they read them. Practical structure does more for comprehension than any amount of sentence polishing:
- A summary of what the document does, in one paragraph, before the operative clauses.
- Informative headings — “When we can end this agreement” rather than “Termination”.
- Money, dates and notice periods pulled into a table at the front.
- Cross-references stated in full: “clause 7.2 (notice periods)” rather than “clause 7.2”.
Where the line runs
Rewriting a document for clarity is editorial work. Deciding what the document should oblige either party to do is not, and no amount of careful drafting substitutes for advice on the substance — particularly for anything involving property, employment, immigration status or cross-border structures. Professional bodies publish general orientation on how to approach that; the Cayman Law Society is one example, and their piece on when template documents are and are not appropriate is a useful check before adapting a precedent found online.
A short test before you send
Hand the document to someone who has not worked on it and ask three questions: what am I agreeing to do, what happens if I stop, and how do I get out? If they can answer all three from the text in under five minutes, the drafting is doing its job. If they cannot, the problem is almost never the reader.
