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Welcome to our Tone of Voice Guide 👋
This is a guide designed for TLB team members, but we also want the world to see it, and when we say the world we predominantly mean our lawyer friends.
See, lawyers are special. The language they use is very special. And by special, we mean painful. We have been (expensively) trained for years to speak in ‘code’, or ‘legalese’ as it’s often called. ‘Legalese’ is reserved for lawyers and the complicated, technical nature of it means that other non-lawyers are left confused by the jargon. This is strange considering that what's written in legal documents is mostly meant for other people, and rarely the lawyers themselves.
As you might know, TLB is on a mission to change the way the legal industry works. We don't like how inaccessible legal services are, particularly contracts. Many lawyers say they have a ‘plain English policy’, but we really mean it. We firmly believe that legal language doesn’t need to be complicated. It can be serious and legally binding, but it must also be simple. A court will not look at a contract that has the word ‘notwithstanding’ in it and interpret it more favourably than if it said, ‘in spite of’ or ‘although’.
A real life example
In 2010, US lawyer Sean Flammer asked 800 circuit court judges to choose which argument was best framed. One was a traditional ‘legalese’ argument; the other was in what he called ‘plain English’.
The judges overwhelmingly preferred the plain English version (66% to 34%). The respondents also said that they thought the plain English author was more believable, better educated and worked for a more prestigious law firm.
In conclusion, plain English makes you more popular, more believable and also makes you sound clever too.
Warmth v competence
Real scientific research has shown that lawyers are one of the least trusted professionals in the universe. While lawyers are perceived as some of the most capable and competent professionals, they’re almost on par with prostitutes when it comes to warmth. Ouch!
If the way someone communicate confuses, frustrates or scares people, it is a fact that they will lose the trust of those people in seconds. That’s even more the case when we, as lawyers, are dealing with people who come to us with sensitive topics or difficult subjects. It’s in that moment that people will decide if we’re really transparent and if we really care.
Now, not all lawyers are like this. We know that lawyers often can’t help it and I’m sure that many readers will agree. It’s often easier to say it in ‘legalese’ than it is in ‘plain English’. But our choice of words matters. Every word is a chance to make a connection with someone.
Why are lawyers like this though?
A couple thousand years ago, the Romans came to Britain and brought Latin with them. Latin became the language of religion and administration. Because the high-power, high-status citizens knew it, they used it as a way to segregate themselves from the common people who couldn’t understand it.
It was a way of saying ‘we’re cleverer than you’.
Lawyers were of course part of the upper echelons of society and Latin was their business. It ipso facto still is. But what we’re (consciously or unconsciously) doing is perpetuating the idea that ‘we’re cleverer than you’ and when we do that to people, they stop trusting us because we’re hurting them, making them feel like we’re withholding information and that we don’t have their best interests at heart.
We know that we can’t get around the fact that sometimes we have to use technical language, and that some terms have nuanced meanings (like ‘indemnity’ instead of ‘you’ll refund us if we have to spend money or if we lose money because of something you did that you shouldn't have done’) but we can try to keep it simple and even engaging where we can.
It’s called 'design thinking'
People often think that ‘design thinking’ or 'legal design' is about throwing some pretty pictures into a contract to make it more... pretty. But in fact, it’s much more sophisticated (and savvy) than that. It’s about taking a view from the user’s perspective. That’s all design thinking really is. It revolves around a deep interest in developing an understanding of the people for whom we’re designing the products or services. A lawyer’s service is actually their writing and speaking. And with that, goes their tone of voice. Good writing is empathetic.
Here’s a test to assess whether the tone you’re using is empathetic. Quite simply, if you were to read it out loud, does it sound like the kind of thing you’d actually say?
Put yourself in your reader’s shoes when you’re drafting your contracts. Who is it for? Will it likely be reviewed by another lawyer because you're a B2B organisation? Or are you in a B2C industry like a fintech where the audience could be a young person? Depending on who you're writing for (and remember, it's hardly ever a judge) your writing should be tailored to that audience.
Why does this matter anyway?
Well it matters - a lot in fact. The more complicated your contracts, the longer they will take to negotiate. Terms that are imbalanced and lack empathy as to how the reader will perceive them will attract more redlines. Long, convoluted documents will hinder relationships and increase your deal costs. Your tone of voice in your business agreements has a tangible impact on your bottom line as a business and so getting it right is key.
Short, concise, balanced agreements will speed up your deal cycle, cost less and help foster relationships - the latter being the very reason why we enter into contracts in the first place. And as a lawyer whose objective is to enable the business to achieve its strategic objectives of growth, an appropriate tone of voice can be an elegant yet highly powerful tool (with no tech required).
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Tips for effective contract drafting
Your contracts don't need to be impenetrable to be effective. In fact, quite the opposite. Here are a few drafting tips to help you supercharge your contract templates:
🌟 Frontload the variable terms in a contract. When creating a contract, put all the variables and most negotiated terms at the top. This empowers the business to lead the negotiations over the commercial issues and discourages detailed negotiations over the main body of the agreement.
🌟 Use summaries, headings and lists. Summarise the key takeaways at the top to give your reader the most important information upfront, with the detail to follow. Headings and lists help break up a page, split information and make the whole document easier to read.
🌟 Avoid overly formal language and jargon. Use plain English, everyday language and get rid of the unfriendly legalese. Nobody in real life actually uses words like "henceforth", "witnesseth" or "thereto" and nor should your contracts.
🌟 Use the active voice. Active verbs make your sentences direct, dynamic and easy to read. Passive verbs can make sentences confusing and ambiguous. For example, it's much clearer and simpler to say ‘we will do this’ rather than ‘this will be done by us’.
🌟 Avoid nominalisations. Use verbs rather than nominalisations. A nominalisation is a type of abstract noun or the name of something that isn't a physical object such as a process, technique or emotion. Examples include "completion", "introduction" and "provision" which are the nominalisations of "complete", "introduce" and "provide". Too many of them make writing very dull and heavy-going. So, instead of saying "The implementation of the method has been done by a team.", you can say "A team has implemented the method." Much better!
🌟 Keep your sentences short. A good rule of thumb is to aim for one point or idea per sentence. However, that doesn’t mean that every sentence has to be short - maintaining a rhythm in your writing is just as important to keep people engaged.
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If you need help making your contract templates a little more readable, relatable and easier to negotiate, we can help! Get in touch for an informal chat about how we might partner together.