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What do lawyers do? They write.
Wait, no, no, we draft. (See, that’s the crux of our biggest problem right there - drafting is writing, folks. Can we just call it writing?)
Sure, some argue in court, but before they do, they write. And others are more transactional, so they also write. Legal drafting is the bulk of the game, and while law school teaches us to “think like lawyers,” unfortunately, it also teaches us to “write like lawyers” and not “for humans.”
Whether you are writing like a lawyer, for a court, or to your client, you’re probably spending a lot of time in Microsoft Word; it’s essentially the operating system of lawyers. As such, it’s probably not a surprise that there are a lot of Word-based tools that can enhance your drafting skills: from a technical perspective (better citations!) to stylistic considerations (write for humans!).
First, let’s start with the citations, authority checks, and anything that makes the rote, painful work (like Tables of Authorities) easier:
What makes great writing for humans? Is it the ability to push every conceivable theory of a case or argument? Is it persuasiveness and pizzazz? Is it strict adherence to proper legal citation?
Or is it a matter of writing clear, concise, persuasive copy that is accessible to anyone with a reading level of sixth grade or higher?
Lawyers are not trained to be writers. In fact, we’re kind of beaten into writing like machines. We read so much old case law in school and have bluebook citations shoved up our... noses... that by the time we graduate, it's nearly impossible to write for humans. We may go into law school with an English minor (guilty) and a penchant for quips and clever turns of phrase, but by the time we leave, we are writing in excessively formal copy, using terminology that is exclusively the domain of old barristers and the judiciary, and there will be hell to pay if anyone uses a contraction! Meanwhile, our word count goes up, our vocabulary becomes more complex, and our accessibility goes way down.
And while that stylistic rigidity starts in our legal documents, it bleeds over into our correspondence and attempts to communicate with clients as well. And the ironic thing is, everyone from the lawyers to the judges to the clients would be better served by concise, plain language writing – less Learned Hand, more Bryan Garner. (Fun fact: the law now requires federal agencies to write in plain language and train their employees on how to communicate in plain language.)
Fortunately, where there’s a problem, there’s probably software. Here is every add-in for Microsoft Word that we could find to help turn down the legal jargon and turn up the plain language:
There’s been a lot of buzz in the news about AI. Truthfully, it is a massive revolution in how information is accessed and documents are generated. In the last year, some of these AI models have gone from barely being able to produce a coherent paragraph to drafting legal clauses and even full contracts. But we’re still not “there” yet. The output is not perfect; it often needs an experienced legal hand to review and correct it, but it is already a massive time-saving tool, especially when you have AI trained on legal documents, like Spellbook, and that AI lives where you do, in Word.
Spellbook is still in early access, and is getting better and smarter every week. (That’s the thing about AI—it is always learning.) Already, you can use it to catch missing clauses and terms, simplify your language, or summarize things quickly to translate boilerplate and jargon into something a client can understand. Best of all, with the new chatbot UI, you’re essentially chatting up a robot and asking it questions, so there’s no complex UI or bouncing between Word and a browser window to deal with. Contact our team today to schedule a demo and see what adding an extra robot brain to your drafting can do for you.