THE LAWYERS WEEKLY
June 3, 2011 | 9
Layout tips
for legal
documents
GOLLO WEEN / ISTOCKPHOTO. COM
Many legal documents would
benefit from an Adobe-inspired
layout makeover.
“In a document I recently
reviewed, the price adjustment
language for share purchase prices
was contained in one paragraph
almost two pages long,” recalls
Brock Smith, a Vancouver-based
partner in Clark Wilson LLP’s
technology and IP group. “I don’t
know how we expect business
people to understand this.”
“Walls of copy daunt the aver-
age person who doesn’t under-
stand legalese,” adds Zahra Al-
harazi, creative director for
Calgary-based Foundry Com-
munications Inc.
Poor document layout causes
more problems than just bad communication. In a 2007 Law.com
article entitled “Beware the Hidden Costs of Bad Formatting,”
president of New York-based
Chelsea Office Systems Inc. Roberta Gelb estimated billable time
needed to make three basic changes to two visually identical (but
HI-TECH
LUIGI
BENETTON
differently formatted) 30-page
Microsoft Word documents. One
required two-and-a-half minutes,
the other more than 60 minutes.
According to Gelb’s math,
such layout-related cost overruns
for a 20-lawyer, 20-secretary
firm exceed six figures annually.
Then there’s the actual look of the
document, something that might,
in a client’s mind, not compare
favourably with the professionalism and credibility implied by a
firm’s website, brochures or other
branded material.
“You can’t overlook the psychol-
ogy that occurs when you hand
people a document,” says David
Canton, a business lawyer with
London, Ont.-based Harrison
Pensa LLP. “If a document looks
sloppy, people assume the con-
tents are not high-quality.”
He uses standard customer
agreements as an example. “I pre-
pare documents in a very profes-
sional format,” he explains. “A user
perceives that agreement as cast in
stone. But if it seems cobbled
together, the look implies it could
be challenged.”
“Clients don’t want to have to
call their lawyers to find a specific
sentence or paragraph,” Canton
continues. “Good formatting is a
pragmatic approach to increasing
readability. You should do it just to
be a better communicator.”
Yet the 1950s look persists in
many legal documents. A lack of
computer training is commonly
blamed, but lawyers wonder how
clients would perceive slick lay-
out. “Would the client pay for
extra training, proper layout,
even dedicated document layout
professionals?” Smith wonders.
“For some of the old-school cli-
ents, there’s nothing wrong with
Courier 12 point, and they might
think, ‘If you’re making it all
fancy, do I pay for that?’”
In a large firm, not necessarily.
Smith, for instance, goes to people
in the word processing or support
departments when he needs help.
“That will be a job of the future,”
he says. “Lawyers, as a group, will
never be as good at document lay-
out as their support staff.”
Lawyers sometimes bring for-
matting difficulty on themselves.
A document Gelb mentioned in
her article, for example, was full
of tabs, hard returns, manual
numbering and other direct for-
matting which can’t be changed
easily. If the font size for 50 para-
graphs needed to be changed, all
50 paragraphs had to be individ-
ually formatted.
Improving document layout
Want to make over the staid look
of your firm’s documents while you
reduce the time it takes to create
them? Try the following tips:
Brand your business first
“What’s your point of differentiation?” asks Al-harazi. “Do
you market to women? Do you
see yourself as more approachable?” Once you decide on your
point of differentiation, put it
into everything that shows your
firm identity.
“Do it right the first time,” Al-harazi advises. “If you do stuff
cheaply, in the long run your competitors will outshine you. It’s better to do it right up front than to
rethink it as you go.”
Brand your documents
“Have some idea of what you
want the document to look like,”
Canton advises. Take styling cues
from your firm’s branded materials as well as documents that you
like the look of.
Write with style(s)
Word styles let you apply multiple formatting settings with one
choice, whether for headings,
See Layout Page 12
Privacy commissioner calls for enhanced enforcement powers
BRIDGET
MCILVEEN
&RACHEL
ST. JOHN
The Privacy Commissioner
of Canada, Jennifer Stoddart,
has signalled a move toward
enhanced enforcement powers.
Speaking at a conference, the
commissioner emphasized that
she was deeply troubled by
recent information security
breaches.
To address this issue, the
commissioner expressed her
view that substantial, “attention-
getting” fines must be levied
against organizations that fail to
adequately safeguard individ-
uals’ personal information in
accordance with applicable pri-
vacy legislation. In conjunction
with her provincial counter-
parts, Stoddart has recently
issued a self-assessment tool
highlighting what may be con-
sidered adequate safeguards for
personal information.
