How to be a legalese-free in-house lawyer

"I teach contract law at Harvard Law School, and I can't understand my credit card contract. I just can’t. They’re not designed to be read." - Elizabeth Warren

?Let’s be honest, lawyers love a bit of legal jargon. At a glance you’re clearly able to write something others find difficult to understand, making you look clever. As an in-house lawyer you should aim for the exact opposite. You want legal issues to be understood, for colleagues to engage with the legal process, and for people to read the legal advice you’ve spent hours crafting. So here are a few tips to help you do just that.?

Think about the user experience

Companies put a lot of effort into user experience for their customers and staff. But often, when the legal stuff is put in by an in-house lawyer, the UX is forgotten. The way you get across your technical expertise to support your company’s work every day is vital. Avoid the trap of thinking simplification is at the expense of legal safety. Instead, think about the needs of the end user and how to design legal processes, documents and training from this perspective.?

Plan the legal design

Find out what questions people ask themselves. Who do they interact with? What are their business goals? Then place the legal advice at the right time along that journey in a user-friendly way. Get your internal clients to engage with coming up with good legal design ideas so they’re behind the idea and therefore more likely to implement it.?

?A simple idea is to look at your contract design. Most people find contracts hard to read and understand. How do yours look? Are they eye-catching? Does it direct the eye to the most important details? Yes, they are legal documents, but they’re also business-critical with a range of economic and other purposes. If you want to secure a signature at the end, make it visually appealing, written in clear language, and presented in a way that supports the company’s branding.?

?Clients are people too

Remember, you’re talking to real human beings. So don’t simply see client-facing challenges in isolation but look at the complete picture and how your legal material fits into their world. As an in-house lawyer, you have a unique opportunity to get to know and empathise with the needs of your client that no lawyer at a top law firm can do in the same way. So, try to make legal and business teams work together at the early stages of any new deal or innovative plans so there’s no struggling to shift a fixed mindset later on.?

?Don’t presume you already know the answers

It’s easy to presume you already know your client so well there’s nothing new to learn. The urge to get to the answer quickly can sometimes come at the expense of discovering what you can offer that’s truly beneficial. How should work be packaged? Is risk mitigation the most important factor? Speed? Cost? The more you know, the more targeted your legal information can be. As an in-house lawyer, taking a legal design approach can make it easier to develop strategies and help you grow strategically and work as part of a business community.?

Jason