I work really hard to use plain English in everything I write. And it is hard, because so much legal writing is just awful, overcomplicated, junk. When you swim through so much sludge in your work every day, it's hard not to be affected. Sometimes I'll be writing and realize that I have inadvertently adopted the same sludgey style as the person I'm responding to. (Which would be written "Sometimes one observes that one had without intention assumed the characteristics, traits, and significant stylistic markings of the discourse being consumed that was prepared by ones opposite number in the transaction" if you were the average lawyer and didn't want to slit your wrists first committing that kind of sludge.)
So it's great to get a compliment, and from the other side to a deal to boot! I drafted a lease for a nonprofit client recently, and the landowner took pains to compliment the drafting. He wrote that he wished every lawyer wrote so clearly. That felt great. Not only did the lease get signed quickly without a lot of back-and-forth about "What does this mean?" but the relationship of the nonprofit to its new landlord is starting out on the right foot, with clear intentions, clearly expressed.
So it's great to get a compliment, and from the other side to a deal to boot! I drafted a lease for a nonprofit client recently, and the landowner took pains to compliment the drafting. He wrote that he wished every lawyer wrote so clearly. That felt great. Not only did the lease get signed quickly without a lot of back-and-forth about "What does this mean?" but the relationship of the nonprofit to its new landlord is starting out on the right foot, with clear intentions, clearly expressed.
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