TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Anon,
Your managers are out to lunch if they think they can
mostly-exclude the lawyers by having you do the bulk
of the grunt-work.
Lawyers are peculiar animals that come in many forms,
but certain traits are almost universal among 'em.
First, no lawyer will EVER review a "legal" document
and NOT spend considerable (i.e., billable) time marking
it up with changes. For the most part, those changes
have no legal value -- which you can confirm by sending
the altered doc to different lawyers, who will proceed
to either alter it back to original form, or mark it
up with entirely different changes (changes that the first
lawyer would contest...).
The lawyer ego does not permit a document to go past
without written (billable, of course) niggling. I know
of only two exceptions, and both those guys are
skydivers, by strange coinkydink.
Second, by nature, a lawyer cannot permit simple, clear
language anywhere that it is possible to insert arcane,
convoluted, rambling... er, where was I?
At one time, my wife did English-French/French-English
translation. On more than one occasion (until she thoroughly
learned her lesson) she encountered lawyers with abysmal
writing skill in one or both languages, who would brook
no alteration to their deathless (but crying out for
euthanasia, nontheless) prose. She still has, somewhere
in her old files, the really vile, abusive, fulminating
letter-of-harrumph that one lawyer sent after she had
corrected his own "English" translation (from his own,
original bad French) text, then he had re-instated ALL of
his original errors, and then she had corrected them again
(with explanatory side-notes to the customer and owner
of the larger documents).
I believe the customer eventually chose to recognize that
the lawyer's middle name was "bumpf" and that as long as
the legal meaning of the sticky parts was retained, it was
important for both comprehension and company image that the
text be in proper English. I also believe that this development
came about only due to a shift in management (the lawyer's
crony got the boot) at the customer company.
Nevertheless, the lawyer billed for every turn-around AND
for the nasty letter to the translator (he CC:d Marie on
the billing, just so she'd know he was screwing her client
for his cost of his own exercise in ego and pettiness).
So, based on experience, it sounds to me as if your employers
may be living in a fool's paradise. My point is that they
might as well save part of the cost... the part where you do
any of the writing <grin>
As for Geoff's remarks about covering your tender butt,
it doesn't have to be a slap in the manager's face. Simply
word your memo as: "This is my understanding of what I am
to do. Please adjust, if I have missed anything. Otherwise
confirm that I have correctly summarized the requirements...
initial here, here, here <flipping page>,here <flip another>
and... here. Press firmly, you are making 7 copies." :-)
Good luck,
/kevin
> -----Original Message-----
> From: anon [mailto:unknownidca -at- yahoo -dot- com]
> Sent: Thursday, April 05, 2001 6:59 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: writing drafts of legal documents?
> I'd like to thank everyone who responded to my post
> about ethics and morals in documentation. It was a
> extremely interesting discussion.
> I have another, potentially more serious, situation on
> my hands and this time I need advice.
> I am being asked to write the drafts of my company's
> legal documents. These documents run the gamut from
> the innocuous 'terms and conditions' of product use,
> to more mission-critical sales contracts and
> consulting agreements.
> My managers have been quite blunt about they need me
> to write these documents: they can't (or won't) afford
> to spend thousands of dollars for lawyers to write
> these documents from scratch.
[snip]
*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available 4/30/01 at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com
Sponsored by DigiPub Solutions Corp, producers of PDF 2001 Conference East,
June 4-6, Baltimore, MD. Now covering Acrobat 5. Early registration deadline
April 27. http://www.pdfconference.com.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
