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[00:00:07] Scott Benton: Hey everyone, Scott Benton here. I am the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast where we help you easily transition from a law school student into your professional career as an attorney after you’ve graduated law school and passed the bar and you have your full ticket ready to go. And we’re here to remind you that the practice of law is not only easy, but it is fun and we’re going to show you how.
[00:00:26] Scott Benton: Today we’re going to look at the subject of how much legal ease Should you use with clients?
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[00:01:21] Scott Benton: Now if you look up the definition of legalese online, the response you get is going to say, Legalese is the formal and technical language of legal documents that is often hard to understand. And I would go on to include that, in that definition, that legalese is completely unnecessary.
[00:01:44] Scott Benton: And I’m going to prove that premise to you. In case you’re not convinced yourself, tell me what this example in legalese means before I reveal the answer. Here we go. In witness whereof, the parties hereunto have set their hands to these presents as a deed on the day, [00:02:00] month, and year herein before mentioned.
[00:02:05] Scott Benton: Now that’s simply a fancy and legalese way of saying in plain, simple, ordinary, everyday English the word date. As in the date you place under a signature line on a document. that you’ve already signed. As you can see, there are a couple ways you can go to express the same thing. One is very complex and extremely difficult for most people to understand.
[00:02:32] Scott Benton: The other is simple and it’s easy for just about anyone. So when it comes to figuring out what that line is between using complex legalese and more Simple language in your work with clients. Let’s first answer the question of how much a client cares about the law. Now, the truth is that your clients, they don’t care about the law at all.
[00:02:56] Scott Benton: Full stop on a percentage scale of zero to a [00:03:00] hundred. Most clients would probably rate legalese at dead zero. Because as we saw in that previous example, it’s much harder to comprehend without reading legalese a few times and then translating the meaning into much more simple words. So why not just start with the simple words and that way you shortcut the whole process.
[00:03:23] Scott Benton: It’s much more efficient. So when it comes to writing and working with your clients, the three most important components you always want to remember to use are clarity, Clarity, and of course, clarity. So when you complicate your message, and you bog down your conversations with complex vocabulary, your ability to fill up your to do list and provide legal services becomes far less efficient and streamlined.
[00:03:51] Scott Benton: Because now you have to include a lot of discussions when it comes to unscrambling the meaning of all this legal jargon that you’ve [00:04:00] included and how it applies to the case that you’re working on. It also tends to just completely erode how much the client likes working with you and how much they trust you, how much they trust this process because The more they understand you, the more they’re going to like and trust you.
[00:04:17] Scott Benton: And, by contrast, the less they understand you, chances are the less they’re going to like and trust you. If you think about it, do you like it when you can’t understand somebody? If they’re using words that you just can’t put together in your mind? Now, in a climate such as the one we’re in today, where people largely believe that legal services should be simply provided for free, or as close to free as possible, and that’s just simply based on the availability of all these do it yourself legal websites, clients tend to feel much better about their paid legal services if the relationship between them and their attorney remains strong.
[00:04:59] Scott Benton: So [00:05:00] it’s important to keep in mind that the more clarity that you’re providing to your clients, the more your clients are going to tend to stick around with you, and they’re going to continue to fund their accounts for their case, which is extremely important.
[00:05:16] Scott Benton: Consider this, even for these podcast episodes, there are a few ways for me to talk about the subjects I’m discussing, and I could easily make these ten times more complicated if I wanted to, but I want to consider my audience, and I want to speak their language. And although this is an audience that’s largely made up of law school students and people who have really more recently graduated law school, maybe in the past couple of years, and both of those groups, it’s also for other groups, but both of those primary groups, They already have a pretty strong command of legal terminology, but I’m still focused on clarity and making sure that I’m presenting these topics and ideas to you in a way that does not [00:06:00] include additional work for you in terms of expecting you to translate every word that I’m using so you can clarify the discussion we’re having.
[00:06:10] Scott Benton: If I were to speak in more complex terms, let’s say, I’d be making more demands of your energy, more demands of your time and your focus. And the whole point of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast is to make this subject as easy and fun as possible so that I’m not scaring you away from future episodes that we put together so you might want to consider the same ideas when it comes to working with your clients. There’s a kind of implied marketing and even a sales power that comes along with simplicity that helps keep your clients engaged and from running away from your law firm because they can’t understand what you’re saying.
[00:06:50] Scott Benton: When deciding on how much legalese to use when you communicate with your clients, it helps to remember who your audience is and to remember that you want to do all the [00:07:00] work by making it as easy as you can for your clients to understand the subjects, the content, and the concepts that can often be complicated.
[00:07:11] Scott Benton: So whenever you have the opportunity, you want to make something difficult to understand more easy to understand. If you can do that consistently, not only is your to do list going to stay perpetually full, but you’re never, ever going to run out of legal services to provide to your clients, simply because your demand as an attorney is probably going to remain pretty strong.
[00:07:34] Scott Benton: I’m Scott Benton. I’m the host of the Classroom 2 Courtroom podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to this episode.
[00:07:40] Scott Benton: Now, if you like the material in this podcast and you’d like to receive an alert, every time we put out a new episode, you can go to our website. Our website is classroom 2 courtroom. com. You can leave us your contact information. We’ll send out an alert whenever we post a new episode. And if this is information that you’re enjoying, don’t forget to share and subscribe.
[00:07:56] Scott Benton: That’s also going to help you stay on top of any of our new episodes [00:08:00] that we release. And until next time, we hope you’ll join us in making the world a better place, one client at a time. Thank you so much.
