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The legal profession has many verbal habits and traditions which impede communication with non-lawyers, even well-educated ones. Developing habits and vocabularies suited to non-lawyers is important, and can help everyone concerned.

There are various ways to attempt this. However, some are apt, and some are ineffective or harmful. Which is which, depends on what is the problem being addressed. To cure an illness, you first need diagnosis. Here are five of those problems with lawyers’ language.

Lawyers use a word unfamiliar to lay people, which has pretty well the same meaning as a common English word or phrase. For example, instead of “submission” say “written argument”. Instead of “the record” say “the court file” or “the shorthand transcript”. Instead of “the plaintiff”, say “the person suing” or (in this case) “The Union Bank”.
Lawyers use what sounds like an ordinary English word, but has a very different meaning in legal matters. This is very dangerous: it is likely to produce positive misunderstanding, rather than mere puzzlement. So instead of “execution”, say “Signing” or “Seizure” or “Performance” (depending on which meaning of the legal term you intend this time). Instead of “stay”, say “freeze” or “postpone”.
Lawyers use a word or phrase not found in ordinary English. Then no good comes from trying to substitute some English word which has some vague similarity. That will either puzzle the audience, or (like #2) give them a bad misunderstanding. The solution is either to use some explanatory phrase or sentence, or to use the legal term and explain what it means. Note that the medical profession properly uses terms like “ultrasound” or “MRI”. They do not (for example) try to call them “photographs”, because that English word has little real similarity to the medical term.
Lawyers use double, treble, or quadruple negatives. Only a trained philosopher can readily understand their meaning.
Lawyers use the passive voice. That is both harder to understand, and tends to be vague, inconclusive, or even misleading. “Dog bites man” differs from “man bites dog”, and “suffered dog biting” is often misleading.

None of these problems is imaginary. The Rules of Court now used in King’s Bench persistently try to use language which lay people use. Sometimes the result is helpful. But the Rules of Court make some of the errors (misdiagnoses of the problem) listed above. That misleads both lawyers and lay people. For example, calling an examination for discovery a “questioning” is a dubious improvement. And then using the identical word “questioning” for two or three other very different legal procedures, is just asking for trouble. See F.E.G. v. M.J.V. 2023 ABKB 726 (Dec. 19) (¶’s 10, 13). (Many provinces and territories name one court “the Supreme Court” though in most civil litigation, it is the lowest civil court, below the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court of Canada. Is that another example?)

– Hon. J.E. Côté

PLAIN LANGUAGE FOR LAWYERS