The Myth of “Precision”

Lawyers often sacrifice clarity for the sake of precision. This, coupled with a lawyer’s tendency to use legalese and jargon may give rise to awkward sentences filled with superfluous words, exceptions and qualifications. Ironically, instead of precision the lawyer creates ambiguity. Adherents of the plain English movement bristle at such formality of language and advise against the verbosity that is often evident in legal drafting. After all, why use three words when one will suffice?

Drafter’s Tip

Words are superfluous if they can be replaced with fewer words without changing the meaning, for example:

Examples of awkward sentences:

Awkward: Mango paid said fine two (2) weeks subsequent to the trial, which cost €100,000.
Revised: Mango paid the €100,000 fine two weeks after the trial.

Here, the amount of the fine causes confusion, and “said fine” and “two (2) weeks” do not make the sentence more precise. In the first sentence, the reader is unsure whether the trial or the fine cost €100,000. By changing the noun into an adjective, and placing the adjective closer to the noun it modifies, and eliminating the superfluous “said” and “(2)” the sentence becomes clearer and less awkward.

Grammatical errors often contribute to awkward sentences:

Awkward: Lawyers and judges receive similar training, the public views them with less respect.
Revised: While lawyers and judges receive similar training, the public views lawyers with less respect.

The first sentence is awkward because the subordinate clause is not subordinate, causing a comma splice, and “them” is ambiguous — does it rename “lawyers” or “judges”? By simply adding “while” at the beginning of the subordinate clause and changing “them” to the specific group (lawyers), the sentence becomes grammatically correct and understandable.