How clear legal writing can give your firm a competitive edge

Ryan Tippet | September 8, 2025

Here’s some pro bono advice for law firms: if you make plain language a pillar of your business, you’ll gain a strategic and competitive edge over your peers.

The legal world is one of those professional spheres with a language of its own. Legal writing is often dense, long-winded, overly formal, and peppered with lesser-known Latin phrases. To make sense of it, readers often have to slog through 70-word sentences and nested lists stacked with synonyms.

Legal people tend to be quite comfortable with this ‘legalese’. They get a lot of practice reading and writing it. It even feels natural to them — more efficient. Within the legal world, using complex legal terminology can seem like the key to credibility.

But for the rest of us mere mortals, legalese is a frustrating barrier to communication. It can confuse and obfuscate, dissuading readers and damaging trust.

That’s why legal firms who emphasise clarity can win clients and keep them satisfied for longer.

What plain legal language looks like and how it helps

Simplifying legal language is not always straightforward. We know this from experience.

Many of the more challenging features of legal writing are difficult to transpose into simpler, shorter terms. And preserving the exact legal intent of a document requires great care.

But plain language principles still work here. That means things like:

Clear legal writing: A practical guide for lawyers

The news gets better for plain language legal writers. ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, has recently released a Part 2 to its plain language standard, homing in on legal communication.

Produced by legal and plain language experts, the new standard ‘establishes guidelines and techniques’ so that readers can ‘readily understand legal communication and exercise their legal rights and obligations’.

Following ISO’s standard grants your legal writing those extra accessibility bona fides.

Find Part 2 of the ISO plain language standard here

And what about the benefits of plainer legal language? We’ve covered those in a blog, too. The benefits are well researched.

They include:

Why plain language matters in legal writing

Plain language can be a strategic differentiator

Despite these clear benefits, most legal documents remain dense and difficult. It’s not easy to turn the tide on centuries of legalistic tone and structure.

But this situation provides an opportunity for savvy law firms to stand out from the crowd.

For many clients, legal services are a big investment. Legal advice is both essential and expensive, and that can be an uncomfortable combination. Clients aren’t excited to spend thousands of dollars on legal services — they’re obliged.

Opaque legal language turns that obligation into frustration. It can leave clients feeling short-changed.

Making clarity in communication a pillar of your firm has cascading effects. It can change how you position yourself in relation to competitors, and how clients perceive you. It lets you stand out as a more user-friendly and customer-centric option — a strategic advantage for legal services that are often more obligatory than exciting.

By adopting plain language principles in client communications and legal work, a plain language law firm can:

Training for legal writers can help you speak your clients’ language

Overcoming the tide of legalese starts with people.

Write Group’s training workshops for professionals can help your team un-learn the legalese and start speaking your clients’ language.

By writing more clearly, our workshops train lawyers to:

Book a Clear Writing for Lawyers training workshop

Learn more about the workshop, its contents, and how we can customise it to suit your firm by getting in touch with us today.

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