The men stand around wear ill-fitting hairpieces and dresses. The women do, too. Then a burly fellow pounds the ground with a big stick like Moses parting the Red Sea. The crowds in the hallway move aside to make way for… the judge.

The tipstaff and criers who lead judges of the Supreme, High and Circuit courts from their chambers to the courtroom create an impressive spectacle. They represent a tradition dating back to the founding of the Four Courts in 1796.

Back then, they had a more practical purpose.Tipstaffs carry a wooden or metal staff with a crown on the top. In the past, the crown was removed to reveal arrest warrants stored within the hollow shaft. It’s a quaint and fairly harmless tradition. However, another old-fashioned legal practice isn’t quite so charming or practical.

Legalese is causing great harm to our ability to communicate with one another.

Pomp and circumstance

Irish solicitors seem stuck in the 18th century, even when communicating with clients. It’s all pomp and circumstance. Legal letters, terms of engagement contracts, websites, marketing materials and even emails are sprinkled with Latin phrases, heretofores and thereins.

What legal practitioners don’t seem to notice is the way it makes clients feel and the barrier it creates between them. If a client does not understand a document they may feel stupid, ashamed or angry. This is not a great way to build client relationships.

The Lisbon Treaty is a classic example of legalese gone mad and we all know how the public felt about it the first time around. Here’s a sample: “Under the principle of subsidiarity, in areas which do not fall within its exclusive competence, the Union shall act only if and insofar as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States, either at central level or at regional and local level, but can rather, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better achieved at Union level. The institutions of the Union shall apply the principle of subsidiarity as laid down in the Protocol on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. National Parliaments ensure compliance with the principle of subsidiarity in accordance with the procedure set out in that Protocol.” Lisbon Treaty, Article 3b, Paragraph 3

Last month, Secretary-General of the European Commission, Catherine Day, said legal language was necessary for the Lisbon Treaty. “It needs to be actionable later on in court” she told the Pat Kenny radio programme.

While it’s true that laws are written more for legislators than for members of the public, Plain English legislation is becoming the international norm. That makes good sense. Laws are written to help govern the people. If you can’t understand a proposed law how can you be expected to obey it or to debate for, or against, it before it is passed?

Misunderstandings and misinformation

During the first Lisbon treaty campaign the government did little to explain the document’s significance or counteract the emotive posters of the No campaign.  Maybe they didn’t know how?

The civil service has its own legalese dialect and our Taoiseach Brian Cowen is undoubtedly one of its native speakers. He’s from a political family so the poor guy probably grew up with civil-service-speak in his house.

Can you image the scene? His parents, when instructing the nanny to get the child some fresh air, may have said: “Going forward, the perambulations of the offspring will heretofore be undertaken with a childcare advocate in attendance. Said advocate will ensure the client obtains a measure of the appropriate levels of the two hydrogen-one oxygen combination as prescribed by parental recommendations.”

This communication style is highly infectious and trickles down to the government’s communications with Joe Public, their client. Even government bodies that are designed to represent and defend the people’s rights find themselves using phrases like “fettering their responsibility” without knowing why. They’ve been brainwashed with the jargon since they took their civil service exams.

What a feeling

When government officials, solicitors and business people use gobbledegook to communicate with their customers they are not doing their job. Professional jargon is often convoluted, elitist and weakens the writer’s intended message.

Client communications say something about the writer and the organisation. A jargon filled letter can provoke strong emotions in the reader. If the language is inappropriate to its audience, the reader may think the company is dishonest, incompetent or hiding something. Reputation is everything and clear communications ensure a lasting, and lucrative, customer relationship.

Legalese fits modern society about as well as those wigs fit barristers. It’s time to cast this tradition aside.

Margaret E. Ward is managing director of Clear Ink and a writing skills trainer for the legal profession. Blog: margaretward.ie

My post-box is jammed with letters that say things like: “I acknowledge receipt of your letter dated September 1, 2008. Please send your remittance.” Who talks like that – a computer? What is a remittance and why should I send it anyway?

Things get even more confusing if I contact customer service people directly. Two weeks ago, my roof sprang a leak and I naturally emailed my insurance company. They asked me whether the damage was from the rain or from a storm? I wrote back saying, “there’s just water pouring in from the roof and I’m not sure what caused it.”

They said they’d cover for storm damage but not rain damage. What does that mean? Is a storm just rain with a bit more wind? Who decides if it’s a storm rather than just a rainy, windy day? I mean, is there some guy in the insurance company who decides or do they call the guy on the RTE weather slot? They haven’t told me what to do so the water is still pouring in.

With all this bad weather – and stress – my stomach’s been bothering me more than usual. My doctor has scheduled a procedure to test for ulcers. I hesitantly rang my healthcare provider to see if I’m covered. They started talking generally about deductibles and how it all depends on the hospital and the plan I’ve chosen. I don’t care about all that. I just want to know – specifically – how much it’s going to cost me. Is that too much to ask?

I always thought I was smart – I have an MA in philosophy for goodness sake – but the phrases these companies use are, well, just a mystery to me.

Don’t get me started on the emails I get from my solicitor. What planet is she on? The first time I met her she was great. She totally understood the needs of my growing business. Then I received their “terms of engagement” letter! I’ll tell you, diary, it was scary. I thought I was in the principal’s office after school. It was all “If you do this, then we’ll do that. If you cross the line then we’ll do blah.” Needless to say, I won’t be using that law firm.

Why can’t the companies that I have to deal with on a regular basis – the bank, the insurance company, the healthcare organisation, the government and my law firm – talk to me in language I understand?

Dear Reader,
What a terrible ordeal. It must be frustrating to feel like a teenager again. Nobody understood how you felt then and, unfortunately, many companies aren’t interested in speaking their customers’ language now.

The corporate ego has got in the way. Companies are so busy thinking about their targets, deadlines and profit margins that they’ve forgotten the reason they are in business – to service the needs of their customers.

Talking to the customer is old-fashioned – and to be avoided – so companies don’t know who you are, they don’t bother to find out and their word choices can make you feel stupid.

Language is simply a tool to communicate a message. Yet, many professions have smashed the most valuable item in their toolbox with a jargon hammer.

Doctors speak of myocardial infarctions rather than heart attacks; bankers talk about compound interest instead of making money on money already saved; solicitors use archaic language that no one understands. Customers simply scratch their heads.

Lingo that only people “in the know” understand is dangerous. It allows vague phrases – like collateral damage rather than murder – to fill our minds with noise rather than information.

Good writers know that copy – direct mail, email, brochures and web copy – should never be about them. It must be about the reader. To get the message across they have to put themselves in the reader’s shoes.

Somewhere along a gobbledegook-strewn path, the business owner’s empathy for the customer morphed into blatant self-interest. The solution? Move your business to someone who speaks your language.

Margaret E. Ward is an Irish Times business columnist and a director of Clear Ink, the clear English specialists. Margaret@clearink.ie

A close relative of jargonitis, academicspeakis and gobbledegook, the malady has taken hold of European laws and infected civil servants throughout the EU.

The virus, mostly found in EU legislation and government publications, attacks the human mind and hijacks its ability to communicate clearly. Although initially confined to government workers, scientists say the virus has jumped from one species to another and is now increasingly found in the general population.

Health officials have issued a public warning outlining the written and verbal symptoms of legalese. They include: writing long sentences that cover different or unrelated points; using too many words; double negatives; an overly formal tone; and showing insensitivity to readers’ needs.

Individuals (except academics) who spout Latin and use words common only in the 18th and 19th centuries – for no apparent reason – may also be infected with the virus.

Those who contract legalese LT08 do not always develop the full-blown disease, legaltwaddle. Experts say it is unclear how the virus is transmitted from one person to another. However, incomprehensible laws, documents and speeches littered with Latin words and empty phrases such as “going forward” have been found to muddle citizens’ minds and destroy their decision-making skills.

Irish citizens are at particular risk of infection this June. Scientists expressed deep concern this week over the viral strength of the Lisbon Treaty and its potential to infect thousands of innocent Irish voters. Attendees at the Guff, Waffle and the Language of Obscurity conference heard the treaty cited as “the worst outbreak of the legalese virus in recent history”.

Disease control expert Dr Plain Talking told conference attendees: “We tested the knowledge of the legal experts for the European Council who drafted the treaty’s text. We found they were unsure of the actual meaning of most sections but, despite this, they genuinely saw nothing wrong with the document’s wording.”

To avoid an epidemic, leading scientists in the language abuse field have asked voters to avoid reading the treaty’s text before voting on it. They also called for the urgent development of legalese vaccines, drugs and diagnostic techniques.

Past attempts to protect the population have been largely ineffective. In 1993, the European Council of Ministers developed guidelines on drafting legislation that said “the wording of [an] act should be clear, simple, concise and unambiguous; unnecessary abbreviations, ‘community jargon’ and excessively long sentences should be avoided”.

A euro jargon buster was also developed for the EU’s information website, www.europa.eu. However, the majority of citizens still can’t make sense of the legalese-tainted language spoken in Brussels.

“The more the virus takes hold, the less likely it is that citizens will understand what politicians say. Since Brussels makes the laws, this communication gap is a frightening divide between civil servants and the people they represent. It will certainly breed suspicion among voters,” said Dr Talker.

Internationally, many countries have put emergency response systems in place to ensure voters understand the law.

In April of this year, the United States passed the Plain Language in Government Communications Act. Also, 44 of the 50 US states require insurance contracts to be written in plain English.

According to the Plain English campaign, “studies in the Australian state of Victoria, which uses plain-English drafting, show that lawyers can understand and use a plain-English version of an act in between a half and a third of the time it takes with the traditional version”.
Ireland is not immune from the disease and, in December 2000, a Law Reform Commission report recommended that laws use contemporary language and shorter and less elaborate sentences.

Irish researchers made a significant breakthrough last week when they identified no-guff antibodies in European Commissioner Charlie McCreevy.

Dr Clarity Please said: “We’ve been looking for someone with immunity to legislative waffle and we were delighted when he told it like it is.”

McCreevy admitted he had not read the treaty and said: “I don’t expect ordinary, decent Irish people, or anywhere else in the globe, to sit down and spend hours and hours reading sections about subsections referring to articles of other subarticles.”

Margaret E. Ward is a journalist and director of Clear Ink, the Clear English Specialists. Email: hello@clearink.ie