Legal information can be made understandable and even engaging when legal document formatting guidelines are applied.
Legal texts—such as laws, contracts, or job descriptions—are often difficult to understand. Therefore, lawyers are often asked to translate them into human language. But if you use proper legal document formatting, translation is unnecessary.
In this article, we, at Assistant for Lawyers, will explain legal document formatting guidelines, who needs them, when, and why, and why some people are afraid of them.
Why is proper legal document structure
There’s no precise definition of a legal document format yet. Therefore, the easiest way to explain it is through the goal of a legal document—to simplify the work with legal documents. If everything is clear and accessible to the user and they don’t spend a lot of time reading the text, then the goal has been achieved.
Roughly speaking, Legal document guidelines are a set of techniques for making documents more understandable. At the same time, ordinary text, such as a business letter, can be simplified as much as desired. A legal document, however, should not lose its legal force, content, or meaning after simplification.
Legal design is a very popular topic these days, and it’s often confused:
- With short text;
- Good numbering;
- Creating a universal page for all occasions;
- Comics;
- Collection of styles in Word;
- Automation of document flow.
Some of these elements may be part of legal design, but in general, it is a whole complex of techniques that includes both visual improvement and work with meaning.
Misconceptions about legal document format
From the outside, it seems convenient when a contract is written in clear language and structured, with every clause easily accessible. But when lawyers, executives, and business owners encounter legal drafting, they have many concerns and misconceptions. Here are the main ones.
- The content of legal documents cannot be faulted because it complies with the law. However, legal design focuses primarily on the form of documents and, to a lesser extent, on the legal content—it doesn’t make a document more or less significant from a legal perspective. This is the main difference between legal design and traditional legal due diligence. Moreover, if a document is more understandable and neat in appearance, it will be easier to understand: a judge or tax inspector who reviews hundreds of documents daily will be able to more easily grasp their essence. For example, hyperlinks help speed up document navigation: when reading on a computer, when a person sees a link to another paragraph in one section, they can quickly navigate to it, rather than scrolling through the document with a mouse.
- There are traditions of legal document writing. Lawyers often cite unspoken traditions of document writing. These typically include a formal style of writing, bureaucratic language, and complex and intricate wording. These traditions are particularly strong in lawmaking and the judicial system. I would say that legal design replaces unnecessary traditions with practical ones. If a tradition isn’t useful, slows down communication, and it’s easy to find another solution that won’t undermine its meaning, then there’s no point in adhering to it.
- Legal formatting makes documents look flimsy. It’s generally accepted that a serious document should contain complex wording. Some even believe this is a sign of respect for the reader. But respect for the reader means, first and foremost, saving them time, effort, and energy while reading the document.
- Legal documents are deliberately complex so that only lawyers can understand them. Some lawyers draft documents in clerical language and, at best, verbally explain their contents to clients in simple language. A good lawyer will formulate a sound legal position and immediately present it in a clear and accessible text. If we are talking about documents used by ordinary individuals, for example, a retail sale and purchase agreement for goods, then such documents should be understandable without special legal or higher education.
- Partners and the courts look askance at those who use legal design. Courts accept documents with any visual formatting: there are no legal restrictions on this. Of course, there may be situations where the legal drafting will be unacceptable or simply unfamiliar to the judge or partner.
However, as a rule, parties are more likely to agree on and sign a contract with simple wording and clear logic. And the court finds it easier to determine the legal content of such documents.
Principles of good legal formatting
Good legal formatting prioritises reader convenience. It doesn’t discriminate between lawyers and non-lawyers: the same text should be understandable to everyone. Bad legal design aims solely to shorten the document, as if the company is saving paper.
Here are the basic principles of good legal design:
- Clear text, no fluff.
- Indents between paragraphs.
- Good numbering.
- Additional visual design.
1. Clarity of the text
❌ Water in the text. Water in a document serves no practical purpose: it’s often used only to stretch simple thoughts and increase the page count. It seems that a solid document should be multi-page. But huge chunks of text are off-putting to the reader—they end up either skipping parts or doing a document review carelessly.
✅ Optimal text isn’t simply abbreviated text, but the result of careful attention to the style and layout of document elements. The simplest example of visual text processing is breaking up one lengthy paragraph into several smaller paragraphs, or one long sentence into several shorter ones.
2. Indentation design
❌ Indented line. In school, we were taught to begin a new paragraph with an indented line—this norm has carried over into adult communication. Indented lines used to be used to save paper, so as not to fill up empty space between paragraphs. But now that documents are mostly electronic, this saving seems odd.
However, indented lines are still used today, often in conjunction with spaces between paragraphs. This is incorrect.
✅ Space between paragraphs. It’s easier to identify the start of a new paragraph by the indents between them. The size of the indents depends on the font, but I generally recommend using a 2.0-point indent: enough to visually separate blocks without making the paragraphs appear disconnected.
3. Numbering design
❌ Extensive multi-level numbering within the text. Numbered lists are very common in legal documents. For example, contracts are largely made up of them. Clause numbers are often placed flush with the text—at the indentation of the first line. As a result, the reader sees a massive text without a clear marker for the beginning of a new paragraph. Finding the right clause in the contract can be difficult: sometimes you have to mentally count the clause numbers to get to the right one.
A single clause often contains several subclauses, resulting in a massive, multi-level numbering system. In a traditional document, it’s difficult for the reader not only to find the desired clause but also to understand that it’s dependent—that is, it’s a subclause that has a main clause, the clause.
✅ Paragraph numbers have been moved to the margins, and multi-level numbering has been reduced. For ease of reference, a small space between the numbering and the text is sufficient. This allows the reader to clearly distinguish between the technical space with the numbering and the substantive space with the text.
American federal legislation uses abbreviated multi-level numbering and increased indentation within subclauses. Abbreviated numbering makes the numbers easier to read, and varying indentation between clauses and subclauses helps identify the hierarchy of provisions at a glance.
4. Additional visual design
❌ There’s no visualization; key information is scattered throughout the document. People often need to know just a few facts, not the entire document. Therefore, users of complex legal documents often resort to visualization—outlining the text’s contents in a notebook, on sticky notes, or on a whiteboard.
This is a necessary decision: I want to keep the key points in front of me, because in classic documents such information is often scattered throughout the document.
✅ Visualization provides key information in one place. Visualization in the form of diagrams and infographics can facilitate familiarization with the document’s content. It’s important that the visualization be accurate and neither expand nor narrow the text’s essence. Otherwise, a single document could receive two conflicting interpretations.
The solution to the problem of scattered key information is to use a media style in legal documents. For example, the key materials of a glossy magazine or newspaper are always announced on the front page, with page numbers. This also works in the legal field. Simply highlight all the key information and organize it neatly at the beginning of the document.
How to implement legal document formatting guidelines
Initially, legal formatting was used only in contracts and lawsuits. But today, it’s being applied to all types of legal information. For example, it’s a popular topic for large businesses, where legal design is being implemented across the board.
It’s important for executives to quickly read the key provisions of a contract and understand how they align with the company’s interests and policies. That’s why corporate directors often request that essential terms be clearly listed: they don’t want to have to scroll through the contract.
At the same time, non-strategic provisions, which are also important for contract execution, are still drafted by lawyers, and they communicate with each other in their own language. However, the workload on lawyers can be reduced by eliminating unnecessary details from contracts.
The fastest way to implement legal design is to outsource it. Training in-house lawyers may be cheaper, but it also takes longer, as the training process takes months. Legal design is a very painstaking and detailed process. A single page of a standard document can take an entire day, sometimes even longer, to rework.
Unfortunately, many companies simply don’t have the budget for legal design as a service, and they have only one lawyer on staff who manages all the organization’s documentation. This is a very common scenario, and if that lawyer’s manager orders the use of legal design tomorrow, the company’s work could simply grind to a halt: the lawyer will spend significantly more time preparing understandable documents. Therefore, it’s always important to weigh the results against the costs involved.
Remember
- Legal formatting deals more with the visual presentation of documents and less with their legal content.
- Good legal design is reader-focused, its primary goal being to attract and hold attention. This approach speeds up document navigation and makes it easier to read.
- Key points of the contract can be highlighted on the cover, effectively previewing the contents. This is useful for executives making contract decisions, while the legal department handles the legal details.
- Any document can be easily made more readable by adding space between paragraphs and placing the paragraph numbers in a separate block to the left of the text.
- There’s no law prohibiting the use of documents formatted according to legal design standards—they will be accepted by courts, prosecutors, and tax authorities. While there’s a risk that some won’t appreciate the unconventional format, it could also be impressive.