All the links in this column open in separate windows.

Book

Clarity for Lawyers

1st edition (1990)

Publication details
Contents
Reviews

2nd edition (2006)

Publication details
Publisher's summary
Contents and other extracts
Reviews
Corrections

3rd edition (2017) (dedicated website)

Book chapter

The Plain Language Movement

in The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law

This sub-page offers publication details, the publisher's summary of the book, a list of its chapters, the section headings of my chapter, and updates.

A paperback edition incorporating minor amendments is now available, reducing the publisher's price from £100 to £30.

Conference presentations

The only presentation I have in publishable form is:
Legalese and plain language: how we might revise s.4(1) of the Appropriation Act 2008

Commonwealth Association of Legislative Counsel, Hong Kong, April 2009; reprinted in The Loophole, January 2010

But the Seminar ideas page on this website grew out of my presentation at Clarity's 2008 conference in Mexico City.

Selected articles and notes

Review

of Christopher Williams' book The Impact of Plain Language on Legal English in the United Kingdom [Routledge 2023]

published on 14 June 2023 in the online journal English Language and Linguistics (Cambridge University Press) and in volume 28, issue 1 (March 2024) of the print version, at pp. 189 - 195. Details added 18.3.24

Double Bind

Journal of the Society of Trust and Estate Practictioners, March 2015

Why is legal writing unprofessional?

first published in the Journal of Legal Secretaries International Inc, January 2011; correction footnoted and defunct link replaced 7.6.22.

Drafting notes.pdf

Clarity 63, May (published Nov) 2010

These "filler" items lost formatting somewhere between author and printer, making them difficult to read and reintroducing ambiguity that the formatting had been designed to remove. Here they are as they should have appeared.

Wasted writing added 28.8.23

Property in practice, December 2007

In support of plain law: an answer to Francis Bennion

The Loophole, August 2008

Clear legal writing (for judges)

Journal of the District Judges' Association c. 2000

Eggbound

Clarity 41, April 1998

Solicitors' negligence: who pays?

Solicitors Journal, 30 January 1998

Drafting snippets

Clarity 34, January 1996

Tried and tested: the myth behind the cliché

Clarity 34, January 1996

Alphabet soup

The Law Society's Gazette, November 1993

British lawyers' attitudes to plain English

Clarity 28, August 1993

Bamboozling the public

New Law Journal, 26 July 1991
Scribes Journal of Legal Writing, Vol 9 (2003-04)

Obtaining by deception

Law Quarterly Review, 1974