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Plain Language Offers Big Opportunities For Lawyers And Accountants

Legal Article Guide

By: Christopher Balmford

Plain language has become a distinguishing feature for service providers. It's also central to triple bottom line reporting and to corporate transparency and accountability.

The documents you write form the voice of your brand. When someone reads your documents, their subconscious conducts a reality check on the claims your organisation makes about itself—claims about being, say, "innovative" and "client-focused".

Do your organisation's documents enhance its brand?

Most accountants strive to make their oral communications successful. But too often they write in a style that suggests they are concerned to make their writing "sound like an accountant".

The related problem of a document "sounding like a lawyer" (ugh!) can be worse in the documents that accountants arrange for clients through law firms. Those documents can be impenetrable.

Poor documents increase costs and delay. They alienate and frustrate readers. They sour relationships rather than sweeten them.

Yet the document a client reads - and therefore the clarity of the document - matters to readers. If the document didn't matter, they wouldn't read it.

But increasingly, plain language matters for reasons that go beyond the marketing benefits related to the voice of your brand (as an individual) and the voice of your organisation's brand.

Plain language also matters because of the thinking behind triple bottom line reporting. That sort of reporting requires organizations to be up front, to be transparent, and to be model corporate citizens in every regard. In an age in which the themes of reform and regulation are often full and frank disclosure, clarity becomes a key.

This pressure to be clear applies to clients in their financial reports and it also applies to accountants advising clients how to manage their businesses and how to organise their lives.

Clarity is achieved by focusing on your audience and your purpose. So, let's deal with purpose first.

You almost certainly know how to write. But do you remember why you write?

Consider the range of possible purposes for writing. Those purposes include: advising, persuading, informing, educating, extracting information, marketing, etc.

Yet even though we have many purposes for writing, most of us use the one style most of the time. People seem to develop a work-voice. They want to sound professional. So they decide to write in a way that is "formal" and "traditional". But "formal" plus "traditional" doesn't equal "professional". It equals pompous and out of date.

How many (if any) of the purposes for which you write are best served by using a formal, traditional, "work-voice" style?

Rather than using our work-voice every time we write, we need to let the purpose of that writing influence — or even dictate — the style in which we write. How could one style suit all the possible purposes?

Let's move from purpose to audience. What style do readers prefer?

When we think like a reader, we know the style of document we want. But frequently, as writers, we don’t write in a style we'd like to read. Ask yourself this: What's the best sort of business writing you read that gets sent to you at home? Then ask, would you...could you...do you, write like that at work? (With thanks to Dr Seuss for the rhythm!)

... if you would, could, or do write like that, then that is terrific. Go for it.

... but if you like a clearer style when you are a reader but you feel that you can't use that style when you're a writer at work (perhaps because it would be, say, "unprofessional"), then maybe your work voice is too in control of your writing.

... and if you still have a concern, then think about your readers.

Which style would your readers prefer you to write in? Perhaps you think, well my "more retail clients" (the proverbial mums and dads) would like a clearer and plainer style. But that style would be no good for my commercial clients.

Maybe you are right. But consider two things:

First, at the end of the day, when your commercial clients go home, those same people are retail customers and retail investors. In that capacity, it's almost certain that they want the documents they read to make sense, to be clear, and to be easy to deal with. And it's almost certain they feel like that about the documents they read at work to - when no one would see them as a retail person at all.

Second, are your emails in the same style as your letters? Unlikely. Which style do your most commercial clients prefer? Sure there's a spectrum of styles. With a quick informal administrative email at one end of the spectrum and say, a letter to be included in a prospectus at the other end. But it's likely that your clients would be happier if you wrote many of your letters in a style similar to the style you use in your more formal emails.

To be fair, it all depends on your audience and your purpose. If you are writing to a government regulator to crave an indulgence (say, an extension of time or a waiving of penalty fees) then by all means be fairly formal and traditional. Likewise, if you are writing to a client who is 65 and an English teacher from the old school (or worse, he's the person who taught you grammar at your old school – yikes!), then maybe it's best to take the formality etc. up a level.

But the rest of the time, we need to recognize that there is a comfortable space in between being too formal and being too informal. That is the place your readers probably want you to be in when you write. If you're in that space, then you're likely to write in a way that they can understand, and in a way that makes them feel you really are client-focused, and maybe even innovative.

In turn, you'll probably be happier in that space too. It will feel more natural, more human, and more alive.

After all, for most humans (whether as writers or as readers), a clear, direct, and personal style is likely to be much better, especially for business writing. Better in the sense that it enables people to understand a document the first time they read it. Better in the sense that having finished reading, they are likely to feel positively towards you - the writer. They'll feel more positive because your document has made it easy for them to know what to do next and how to do it.

Maybe your readers will even refer clients to you, saying "You know, I can understand everything she writes the first time I read it. That alone gives me confidence and saves me time."

(Just thinking about "on the other hand" for a moment. Do you think any clients say to their friends and colleagues "Yeah use my accountant. Nice guy. Knows his stuff. The best thing is, I can't understand anything he says or writes. It's fantastic. His style is formal, traditional, and heavy. It's almost like dealing with a lawyer.")

Today, clients are increasingly prepared to pay for documents they can understand. One day soon, they'll refuse to pay for documents they can’t understand. Fair enough too.

Christopher Balmford (CEO of Cleardocs) is an internationally recognized expert in making legal and related documents clear, accurate, and easy to use. For more information, visit his Plain Language website and learn how this can benefit any business.

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