#23903
Answering the Critics of Plain Language
Plain language has to do with clear and effective communication -- nothing more or less. It does, though, signify a new attitude and a fundamental change from past practices.
Kimble, Joseph. Plain Language Network (2003). Articles>Writing>Legal>Minimalism
#31785
In 1992, the American Bar Association released the MacCrate Report, which listed the ten skills and four professional values that all attorneys need and critiqued law schools and state bars for not doing enough to teach and encourage the development of these skills and values. In response, law schools have significantly increased the skills-based components in their curricula, and most state bar exams now include a performance test. Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) programs already provide substantial instruction in all of the skills and values described in the MacCrate Report; further, an education in TPC prepares graduates to excel in law school and on the bar exam. This knowledge offers opportunities for growth if educators, administrators, and scholars take steps to encourage students to consider not only writing for but also joining in the legal profession.
Todd, Jeff. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2008). Articles>Education>Legal>Business Communication
#31423
Communicators and Lawyers: Winning in Both Courts
Professional communicators and attorneys have long stood side by side as both fought to win in court—one in the court of law, the other in the court of public opinion. These two sometimes wary compatriots, however, are now beginning to partner more frequently to garner the best results for the executive suite.
Deveney, John and Meghan Ozcan. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Legal
#22231
Contracts: An Introduction to the Skills of Legal Writing and Analysis 
Contracts is a computer program designed for first year undergraduates studying Obligations in Glasgow University's School of Law, written by Paul Maharg and Professor Joe Thomson. It aims to improve students' written work.
#30111
Customer Profile: Ernest Svenson, PDF for Lawyers
A well-known advocate for the effective use of new technologies in the legal profession, New Orleans-based attorney Ernest Svenson finds Adobe Acrobat and PDF to be highly valued tools in a document-intensive field.
Foss, Kurt. Adobe (2007). Articles>Information Design>Legal>Adobe Acrobat
#26086
Disability Discrimination Act: An Update for 2005
Many organisations are confused and concerned about the latest requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), which came into effect on 1st October 2004. Failure to make reasonable adjustments may mean that organisations are discriminating against disabled people. Yet what does 'reasonable adjustments' mean and what exactly do organisations need to put in place?
System Concepts (2005). Articles>Accessibility>Legal>United Kingdom
#24046
Editing All the Legalese the Law Allows 
Strictly speaking, legalese isn't intended for use outside a judicial context, but quasi-legalistic writing, with its officious tone, wordiness, and complex terms, percolates into business, government, and public interest documents. It's a parroting of the real thing -- which is already hard to swallow -- and there's a lot of it around. That kind of legalese demands to be edited, because people will do almost anything to avoid reading it.
Mayhew, Paul and Elizabeth McBurney. Editorial Eye, The (1997). Articles>Editing>Legal>Writing
#29013
The Effects of Print and Other Text Media Developments Upon the Law in America 
The law has long been shaped by the technical aspects of compiling, writing, storing, and accessing textual verbiage. Text media technology affects all areas of the law, from its intellectual basis to its promulgation, dissemination and enforcement. From America's Colonial period, the operative state of the art of printing has accordingly shaped the development of the law in America, and has caused it to grow in a different direction from the law of England. Since the Colonial period, the state of the art of text media technology has made quantum evolutionary leaps forward, impacting American law in the process. Artifacts of these text media technologies are to be found in the statutes, legislative histories, judicial decisions, and other legal materials. Modern technology has accelerated the pace of text media technology development, and has impacted the law accordingly. Current developments continue to impact the law on an ongoing basis, and future developments in text media technology can be expected to leave their impact upon the law.
Ryesky, Kenneth H. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (1999). Articles>Publishing>Legal>History
#25004
Good Legal Writing: of Orwell and Window Panes
George Orwell once wrote that `[g]ood prose is like a window pane.' What I take Orwell to have meant by that remark is that when people read good prose, it makes them feel as if they've `seen' something more clearly.
Samuelson, Pamela. University of Pittsburgh Law Review (1984). Articles>Writing>Legal>Minimalism
#31015
Explains how a leading global law firm manages its market and client research. Outlines the firm's divisions, business activities and client base. Explains in detail how the firm uses business research, covering use of market intelligence on the business issues that an individual client faces, and the gathering of intelligence about the client, to disclose the nature and extent of the firm's ambitions to advise the organization concerned. Discusses the staffing of a law firm's business research capability, pointing out that not only staff expertise but also confidentiality concerns mean that it is not always efficient for lawyers to access internal and external information sources directly. Suggests that defining the minimum business research necessary improves the usefulness of the information delivered and saves the firm time -- and that removing the uncertainty about what is required improves job satisfaction as well.
Blaxland, Diane. Business Information Review (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Legal>Collaboration
#31422
The Hazards of Translating Legal Documents
The issue of translation is a global one and doesn't just relate to mistranslations by American and British English speakers. Today, poor translation can be particularly dangerous given the speed at which events are reported. How dangerous? According to the Dow Jones Newswire of 12 May 2005, one mistake was worth several billion U.S. dollars.
Frievalds, John. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Language>Legal>Translation
#29755
This study utilizes the hegemonic model of crisis communication to critically analyze the ideological implications of Nike's sweatshop labor crisis that culminated in the Kasky v. Nike court case. This groundbreaking case merits further examination and, informed by Gramsci's notion of hegemony, reveals the underlying ideological struggle present in the Nike crisis: a struggle for voice, power, and free corporate speech. Activist voices opposing sweatshops, Nike's defenses, and eventually, the legal decisions of the U.S. court system constituted competing voices in these ideological struggles over what is acceptable or right corporate behavior. This hegemonic struggle influenced standards for international labor, public relations efforts that misrepresent facts, and consideration of corporate public relations as free or commercial speech. This hegemonic model of crisis communication, unlike previous theories, recognizes the dynamic struggle between voices with various levels of power and the important ideological implications resulting from competing voices in crisis communication.
McHale, John P., Joseph P. Zompetti and Mary Anne Moffitt. JBC (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Legal>Public Relations
#25100
Internet Advertising and the Law
The Internet is a new marketing frontier where the rules and regulations are rapidly evolving. Governments throughout the world aim to redress this imbalance by providing protection to their citizens through laws and regulations which control the use of advertising.
Hudson, Roger. Usability.com.au (1999). Articles>Web Design>Legal>Marketing
#20063
Iolis Authoring in a Web Environment
Recently, there has been increasing focus on the acquisition of research skills by law undergraduates. One reason for this interest is a belief that many such students do not acquire an adequate level of research skills by the time that they graduate. Reflecting this concern, the Law Society/Bar Council's Joint Statement on Qualifying Law Degrees and the Quality Assurance Agency's Benchmark Standards for Law both place great emphasis on the need to improve research skills training at University level. In the light of these developments, Durham University's Centre for Law and Computing was asked to develop a self-paced learning package providing more advanced training on the skills necessary to do legal research projects. It was envisaged that the learning package in question would take the form of an Iolis style workbook. Rather than use traditional law courseware authoring tools, however, the Centre chose to experiment by attempting from the outset to develop the workbook as a website comprising interlaced text and interactions. If successful, such an approach would have the benefits of producing a prototype that was: (i) readily accessible across the Internet, or a campus intranet; (ii) customisable to the needs of individual law schools; (iii) flexible enough to reflect more of an author's own personal approach; and (iv) massively interconnectable with campus intranets and with the Internet at large.
Widdison, Robin. JILT (2002). Articles>Education>Legal>Online
#28827
Review: Law and Internet Cultures
Kathy Bowrey's Law and Internet Cultures critically deconstructs the law in the context of legal culture, and especially looks at how U.S. law, practice, and culture has influenced technology law. Bowrey, a lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales, writes as an "Australian author" but her analysis clearly contains a global perspective as she looks to global structures and laws in other countries such as the United States. The book's analysis draws upon an incredibly broad range of literature including but not limited to traditional "literature" (e.g., Orwell's 1984), economic analysis, communications theory, and cultural studies. She stretches her analysis, connecting the heretofore disconnected (like Foucault, Coombe, Mandeville's travels, Napster, Grokster, etc.) and makes these horizontal connections in the context of discussions of verticality--like globalization, international standards, international patent norms, and global governance. The reading will be difficult for folks without a solid background in information technologies and law (and is just plain difficult for reasons mentioned below), but Bowrey does provide at least brief definitions and description of acronyms where need be. She tends to begin chapters with details and then brings things together at chapter's end--but this strategy seems to work for the complex subject matter. This is a great book for reading out of order or skipping to particularly relevant sections. Each section of each chapter can hold together on its own. Numerous diagrams and illustrations add to the flavor of this unique and much-needed book.
Rife, Martine Courant. H-Net (2006). Articles>Reviews>Legal>Technical Writing
#12999
Legal Code: When Intra Becomes Extra
And somehow, on March 8, months of chat logs--what a CEO and his management team talked about in their almost daily online chats were the ordinary, boring aspects of running a company. But a few posts involved company strategies. The posts revealed negotiating tactics the team planned to use with business partners, and some of those tactics revealed a fundamental lack of good faith. If the public message logs didn't increase the company's liability exposure, they certainly poisoned its hard-earned business relationships.
Fausett, Bret A. WebTechniques (2001). Articles>Communication>Legal>Online
#21549
Legal Communication in Technical Communication Programs: Worth Thinking About? 
What, if anything, should technical communication programs teach their students about the nature of law and the production of legal discourse? When is technical writing also legal writing, and vice versa; when is legal writing (really) technical? Are there distinctions worth maintaining and dissolving here? Do lawyers' relationships to, and problems with, legal writing contexts and processes parallel in important ways technical writers' relationships to, and problems with, technical writing contexts and processes? If they do, is a conversation between the disciplines worth institutionalizing, at least experimentally, in each other's programs?
Stratman, James F. CPTSC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Business Communication>Legal>Technical Writing
#19854
What are these issues and how do they affect you? Whether writing source code, developing e-commerce Web sites, or using the Web for business or as a consumer, you can be affected by Internet law in ways you might not imagine. Our rights of free speech and privacy take on new dimensions in cyberspace. Our copyright and trademark laws are being applied to cyberspace with caution and controversy. New avenues of criminal activity in cyberspace can wreak havoc in our business, professional, and personal worlds. This paper focuses on Internet law involving copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, free speech, and privacy.
Kagan, Elissa. STC Proceedings (2000). Articles>Publishing>Legal>Online
#31466
Legal Issues Involved in Monitoring Employees' Internet and E-Mail Usage
Many employers have determined that there is a need to monitor employees' computer usage. According to a 2003 survey by the American Management Association, more than half of U.S. companies engage in some form of e-mail monitoring. Often, this is in addition to monitoring work-related communications and activities—including reviewing Internet usage, videotaping the work-site or recording employee telephone calls. More and more employers are engaging in some form of monitoring. Unfortunately, without a full understanding of the risks, employers may open themselves up to potential lawsuits. In addition, such techniques may result in low morale among employees who resent being told that they cannot use e-mail for personal messages and feel that their every move is being monitored.
Towns, Douglas M. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Legal>Email
#10609
The Legal Position of E-mail Disclaimers
Legal 'disclaimers' in e-mail messages, like those in faxes, are now commonplace. These disclaimers attempt to limit the sender's liability for the message's content. This article discusses the effectiveness of these disclaimers under English law.
Halberstam, Simon. GigaLaw.com (2001). Articles>Publishing>Legal
#31674
Making Academic Work Advocacy Work: Technologies of Power in the Public Arena
Through interviews and courtroom observations in a case study done in collaboration with a community partner in two judicial districts in Minnesota, the authors extend the scholarly conversation about critical, activist research in business and technical communication and make pedagogical suggestions by studying two groups who contribute to the discourse about victim rights: judges who accept plea negotiations and make sentencing decisions and advocates who help victims contribute, through victim impact statements, their reactions as crime victims and their requests for certain punishments and conditions for the crime perpetrators. The authors identify the technologies of power used by each group to assert their disciplinary authority and trace how these assertions play out in the courtroom. They conclude that by capitalizing on the normative structures of impact statements, advocates may actually give victims more power. Such activist research might benefit research participants and enhance research methods.
Propen, Amy and Mary Lay Schuster. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>TC>Legal>Ethnographies
#23708
Mapping the Information Environment: Legal Aspects of Modularization and Digitization
The article highlights the language of the digital and the principle of modularization as the basic concepts which the further development of the information environment will have to pivot around, regardless of how conflicts between freedom and control are temporarily solved. Perceiving both the computer and the Internet as complex systems, the authors look at how modular design of these systems freed the functionality of applications from the physicality of infrastructures, describe the evolutionary gains adhering to modularity, and how to preserve them -- elaborating on the issues of access to the cable platform for broadband Internet and to virtual networks for computer technology. Their second focus shows how digitalization of information makes possible the merger of content and its protection. Especially through the use of DRM systems, private actors can create right enforcement mechanisms independent of the State. The legal system therefore faces new and more complex relations between private will and public sovereignty. In such a merged system it is harder to maintain freedom -- much like in the fusion of function and infrastructure.
Ottolia, Andrea and Dan Wielsch. YJoLT (2004). Articles>Information Design>Legal
#27502
La norma di riferimento è la legge 1 marzo 2006, n. 67 pubblicata nella Gazzetta Ufficiale n. 54 del 6 marzo 2006. Tale norma è di iniziativa governativa (Ministro senza portafoglio per le Pari opportunità Stefania Prestigiacomo, Ministro del lavoro e politiche sociali Roberto Maroni di concerto con il Ministro della giustizia Roberto Castelli) e risale al 2 luglio 2003 - vale a dire sette giorni prima dell'emanazione del dlgs 216/2003.
Scano, Roberto. Webaccessibile.org (2005). (Italian) Articles>Accessibility>Legal>Standards
#20351
Le linee guida del W3C in materia di accessibilità dei siti web hanno avuto un forte impatto soprattutto nei paesi anglosassoni dove, per primi, i governi hanno recepito tali linee guida rendendole di fatto obbligatorie per la realizzazione dei siti internet delle amministrazioni pubbliche. In Europa esistono delle comunicazioni della Commissione Europea che sono state recepite dai vari paesi. In quest'area del nostro sito andremo ad esporre i documenti normativi delle varie nazionalità approfondendo l'analisi della normativa europea e italiana.
Bertini, Patrizia. IWA-HWG (2003). (Italian) Articles>Accessibility>Legal>Italy
#27906
Occupational Health and Safety Laws Today
The state and the government, as we understand, are responsible for the safety security of the citizens. The state and its organs understand this as a mandate and this also means realising the lofty goal of safety and health for all in every walk of life.
Honnecker, Matthias. tekom (2006). Articles>Documentation>Legal>Government
