Modern Legal Drafting: A Guide to Using Clearer Language Book

	List of Cases
	List of Statutes and Subsidiary Legislation
	List of Panels and Tables
	Acknowledgements
	Introduction	1
1	What Influence the Legal Drafter	5
	Familiarity and habit	6
	Conservatism	7
	Fear of negligence claims	12
	Means of production	14
	Professional pressures	17
	Straining to avoid ambiguity	18
	The mixture of languages	19
	Payment by length	26
	Payment by time	30
	The litigious environment	30
2	How Legal Documents are Interpreted	32
	What judges have said about traditional legal drafting	32
	The principles of legal interpretation	38
	The two golden rules of interpretation and drafting	48
	Commercial or purposive interpretation	50
	Importance of context	51
	Modern restatement	53
	Dangers in using precedent as an aid to interpretation	57
3	The Move towards Modern English in Legal Drafting	58
	The United Kingdom	59
	Australia	71
	The United States of America	77
	Canada	81
	What judges have said about plain English	83
4	Some Benefits of Drafting in Plain English	85
	The meaning of 'plain English'	85
	Increased efficiency	86
	Fewer errors	89
	Image of the legal profession	90
	Marketing	91
	Compliance with statutory requirements	91
	Conclusion	95
5	What to Avoid when Drafting Modern Documents	96
	Wordiness and redundancy	97
	Overuse of 'shall'	99
	Obscure language	104
	Unusual word order	105
	Constantly litigated words and phrases	106
	Foreign words and phrases	108
	Long sense-bites	108
	Legalese and jargon	109
	Peculiar linguistic conventions	115
	Nouns instead of verbs	117
	Overuse of the passive	117
	Deeming	117
	Definitions	118
	Overuse of capitals	122
	Provisos	125
	Conclusion	127
6	How to Draft Modern Documents	129
	Modern, standard English	129
	Document structure	131
	Layout and design	133
	Short sense-bites	137
	Punctuation	139
	Definitions	142
	Tables, plans and formulas	144
	Notes and examples	149
	'Shall' and the modern document	150
	Handling generality and vagueness	152
	Pronouns	155
	Inclusive language	157
	Problems with 'and', 'or'	158
	Drafting in the present tense	161
	Deeds	161
	Amending documents	163
	Standard forms	164
	Conclusion	165
7	Using the Modern Style	166
	Lease: how to bring it to an end if the property is damaged Company memorandum of association: subsidiary objects clause	168
	Will: attestation clause	169
	Will: distribution in unequal shares	170
	New land obligations: buyer's restrictive covenant	172
	Conclusion	174
	Further Reading	175
	Index	177