‘Legalese’ yields initiatives by lawyers and the Judiciary – 07/18/2023 – Power

The STF (Federal Supreme Court) needed to call a “Javanese teacher”, said Minister Luís Roberto Barroso in November 2019. The comment referred to a vote by his court colleague Dias Toffoli, which lasted more than four hours and, for the minister, it was impossible to understand.

Toffoli had spoken in court about the sharing, without judicial authorization, of information between control bodies and investigative authorities. The true content of the speech, however, would have been hidden behind a dense legalese – the inflated language and the technical terms of the law. And even his peers had a hard time understanding.

Initiatives by the Courts of Justice and a course organized by the OAB-SP (Brazilian Bar Association in São Paulo) are examples of actions that have been trying to remedy lengthy texts that are difficult to understand in the legal sphere.

“If an ordinary citizen cannot understand an ordinance from the Ministry of Health — and we saw this a lot during the pandemic —, how is he going to understand the issue of his rights?”, asks Ivy Farias, lawyer and journalist.

Together with Marcio Caparica, specialist in digital communication, she organized a free course, promoted in June, entitled “Writing Law: Creative Writing for Advocacy”. Now, the duo tries to take him to other sections of the OAB.

The two gathered recommendations – many of them present in the book “Writing Law: Creative Writing Manual for Legal Careers” (publisher A Palavrista, 2020) – for lawyers and law students to avoid legalese. They range from the construction of sentences (focusing on the use of direct order, that is, subject, verb and complement, thus arranged) to the choice of terms.

“Has the power”, “otherwise” and “on screen”, for example, can give way to “is able”, “equally” and “in question”, according to the pair’s recommendations. Resumes of someone already quoted can be made by pronouns like “this” or “he”, instead of “the same”. Translations are to be preferred to foreign terms; if impossible to translate, at least explain the meaning.

“The value [do advogado] for clients it increases a lot when he is able to make a document that the client doesn’t need to reread two or three times”, says Marcio. The duo also draws attention to a more inclusive language in the world of law.

Using “homosexuality” instead of “homosexuality”, “orientation” instead of sexual “option”, and, when dealing with transgender people, not using the registered name, but the social name, are other recommendations that they consider important.

For Yasmin Curzi, professor of law at FGV-Rio, the specific terms of law have a time and place. “You can’t go up to a student and say that he shouldn’t use the appropriate legal terms in a lawsuit, because otherwise the Judiciary itself will complain”, explains the teacher and lawyer.

But, for Yasmin, even some typical legal situations (such as special courts, where lay people may not be accompanied by lawyers) end up gaining clarity if language addictions are avoided and communication with the public is privileged.

The Court of Justice of Rio de Janeiro, this year, added to these efforts for greater clarity in communication by publishing its Simple Language Manual.

Ricardo Rodrigues Cardozo, president of TJ-RJ, points out that this effort comes after the CNJ (National Council of Justice) published, in 2009, its Resolution 85.

The document stressed the need to “disclose, systematically, in accessible and didactic language, the rights of citizens and the services made available to them by the Judiciary”.

“Our great difficulty is to undress [do linguajar próprio do direito]”, says Cardozo. “In the groups we talk to, [devemos] realize that there is diversity and that we cannot use those terms.”

The TJ-RJ manual also emphasizes visual law —the visual right—, that is, the use of images in legal documents. At least two other Courts of Justice published similar booklets: Mato Grosso and Rio Grande do Sul. The justifications for the publications are the same: to make Justice more accessible.