Search Results for: law

Published in The Clarity Journal 82 – 2020. Background Northwest Justice Project (NJP) and the Superior Court of Washington have long relied on plain language and readable design to support people who want access to legal forms and information, but do not have lawyers. In 2018, NJP asked Transcend to create 6 new legal icons […]

Published in The Clarity Journal 81 – 2020. The right to a trial by jury is one of the fundamental elements of the American system of justice. Jurors are asked to engage in a complicated and difficult task, listening to different versions of facts provided by the parties at a trial and applying their understanding […]

Published in The Clarity Journal 80 – 2019. Every reader of this journal will be convinced that plain language revisions improve reading success. But in this article, I will argue that this improved success might not help the people you wanted to help in the first place; people who do not read as easily as […]

Tialda Sikkema works in the law department of the University of Applied Sciences in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Since 2009, part of her work is to train judicial officers in document quality and legal writing. For ten years she was a member of an appeal commission in labour cases. In 2018, she will finish her PhD […]

Vera Gergely (Hungary) has worked in different fields and environments, from NGOs through multinational companies to startups. She has experience in software testing, project management, organizing events, and technical writing, with a Masters in Economics. In 2014 she embarked on the ambitious task of introducing plain language in Hungary. Since then, she has worked as a […]

In this issue : Access to justice requires plain language Do you understand your rights? Lawyers would like to write clearly, they just don’t have time Clarity in books on financial law: An author’s view Access to justice — “I did it my way” The value of plain language jury instructions in faciliating access to […]

Professor Cheryl Thomas, Professor of Judicial Studies at University College London, will tell us about her research into jurors’ understanding of the instructions judges give them. Her 2010 study, ‘Are Juries Fair?‘, found that when judges provide written directions on the law to jurors this helps jurors better understand how specific legal terms are used […]

Robert Eagleson has been involved in ground- breaking plain English work in Australia. He contributed extensively to the first plain English legal document (a car insurance policy) in 1976. As commissioner in charge of the plain English reference to the Victorian Law Reform Commission, he demonstrated that even complex legislation could be written in plain […]

Maya L. Frazier, JD,has in-depth health law policy and research experience with health information technology and health privacy. Currently, Maya serves as a privacy policy program analyst for the Office of the Chief Privacy Officer within the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technolo- gy at the U.S. Department of Health and Human […]

A not-for-profit academic organization focused on reforming legal writing. It organizes the Burton Awards which reward lawyers and law students for distinguished, clear, and concise legal writing.