Remember how you struggled to learn thorny legal concepts at law school? Did you ever wade through a 100-page judgement searching for a ratio? As an articling student, did you ever grow frustrated trying to find a particular provision in a 30 page legal document?
At a family gathering, has a relative ever hauled out a legal document for you to translate into plain English that they could understand and act on it?
Have you ever struggled to complete a government form because it asked the wrong questions, or the information you wanted to provide didn't seem to belong there?
If these examples sound familiar, you'll appreciate why so many people want legal information that is clear, concise, and comprehensible. The 1994 CBA Task Force on Legal Literacy learned that most people find legal documents difficult both for the language and the unfamiliar concepts. They can read, but are stymied by legalese. Anyone who hasn't been to law school needs help with legal material and they need in to be well-organized, well-designed, self-explanatory, clear and lucid.
B.C. statistics show that 12% of adults cannot read or they struggle just to read simple text. And 31% of B.C. adults cannot cope with unfamiliar or complex information, such as reading and acting on a lawyer's letter. That means that at least one in three of your clients probably finds your writing difficult and, because it is important to them,
frustrating.
Who are these people? Many senior citizens had only elementary school education and their reading skills may be low by today's standard. Many middle-aged people went to high school but have let their reading skills deteriorate. Along with many younger people, they have fallen out of the habit of reading -- they get all their news from television and radio, all their entertainment from tv, films, and concerts.
Another group of people suffered during their developmental years from poverty, abuse, neglect, disabilities or racial discrimination. These are major roadblocks to a child's education. These children can have trouble concentrating at school and may never learn to read adequately.
Immigrants may be literate in their first language but struggle with English while others are not literate in their first language and learn English slowly.
These people are your clients. These people with literacy deficits can be productive citizens and successful business people. Literacy workers have observed that the legal problems facing adults with low literacy skills are similar to those of the general population.
Even adults who are literate may be completely at a loss when mired in the domain of legal literacy. Their reading and processing proficiency is simply not up to the skills demanded by the law. One man with low literacy skills told the researcher, "Even when I took the papers home and showed them to my wife, she couldn't help me. And she can read! Do legal papers have to be written like that?"
You can see that your clients' literacy can affect the delivery of legal services. The studies found that many people don't enforce their rights because low literacy blocks their access to the legal system. Others with better reading skills are easily intimidated by legalese.
Literacy is no longer looked upon as an either or proposition -- a skill you either have or do not have. Literacy requires a set of skills measured over 5 levels. People with skills at level 1 or 2 are have low literacy and are challenged by complex written material. Those who in levels 3 and 4 are competent with general information in logical, clearly written text and well-organized documents.
Only 2.7 per cent of the Canadian population have literacy skills at level 5. Level 5 test tasks required the reader to search for information in dense text that contains a number of plausible alternatives to serve as distractions; some require readers to make high-level inferences or use specialised knowledge; some tasks require readers to search complex displays of information that contain multiple distractions or to process conditional information. Sounds like a Court of Appeal, doesn't it? Lawyers comfortable with processing complex legal information will have to work hard to successfully communicate that legal information to their clients.
Literacy isn't a single skill applicable to all types of text, nor an infinite set of skills with each set used for a different type of information. Literacy is the ability to understand and use printed information commonly faced in daily activities, at home, at work, and in the community. Can't we agree that being literate in law is different from being literate in other areas of life? Written legal material can create a formidable obstacle to use of the justice system. And those with low literacy skills do not see lawyers as facilitators but as gatekeepers at the halls of justice.
As a lawyer, you are not expected to teach your clients to read. But there are steps you can take to help clients grasp the legal context of their problem, the legal process required to resolve the problem, and the complex legal language and specialised terminology. These steps involve improving client communications generally, modifying the way you establish the client record, and modifying other office practices.
It is worth your effort to take client-literacy into account because poor communication between you and your client can interfere with your client's ability to give you proper instructions and with your ability to obtain the appropriate remedy for your client. The benefits to lawyers of making these changes include clearer communication, increased efficiency in practice procedures, improved legal outcomes for your clients, and increased client confidence and satisfaction with your service. Clearer communication can contribute to fewer complaints about your service.
In the next few weeks, the managing partner of every law firm in BC will receive an information kit from Lawyers for Literacy, a project of the BC, CBA Plain Language Section. The purpose of the project and the kit is to assist lawyers to improve communications with their clients and thereby help clients, particularly those with difficulty using print materials, to access the justice system.
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Canadian adult population at literacy levels (on prose scale)
Level 1............ Level 2............ Level 3.......... Level 4........ Level 5.....
..16.6 ................. 25.6............. 35.1............... 20........... 2.7
*International Adult Literacy Study, 1995
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For the International Adult Literacy Study of 1995, the following definition was adopted:
Literacy: Using printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential.
*International Adult Literacy Study, 1995