Law Academic Editing Services

Precision in legal language

The use of precise language is the highest priority in law, as even the slightest vague phrasing can get a contract declared void, if in the wrong place. Paralegals will often work closely with a law academic editing service to ensure rigor in what they have written. As David Mellinkoff (2004) wrote in The Language of the Law, "The law is a profession of words." This is most apparent when it comes to writing contracts, which often necessitate numerous footnotes and archaic language that although it has passed out of the modern vernacular, survives in legal documents due to its extreme specificity.

This also leads to the thorny legal issue of when is a contract so intractable that it becomes unenforceable? Obvious answers to this exist, such as when a contract is signed under duress (including undue influence; while duress refers to threatening behaviour or blackmail, undue influence refers to when one party exploits a special or particularly persuasive relationship with the other party to get them to sign a contract), when one or both parties to a contract lack the capacity to grasp the full implications of what they are signing, or when the terms of an agreement are misrepresented.

Interpreting terms and context

There are less obvious ways a contract can be declared void, such as unconscionability. This refers to when the terms of a deal are so utterly unfair that the contract cannot be allowed to stand, such as when one side has ridiculous arbitration rates or severely unequal bargaining power. The line that denotes when the terms of a deal are unconscionable is difficult and significant academic effort has been put into defining this, such as by Braucher (1969). The final arbiters of where the line lies are often judges, but most lawyers can give you their opinion based on their experience, and will help you take your circumstance to a judge if they believe that it has merit.

Academic legal writing

Although all areas of law involve significant amounts of writing, the usefulness of law academic editing services is essentially restricted to helping students write up findings in papers for classes, as research is performed in the courtrooms and parliaments as judges and civil servants seek to understand and define new areas of law. For example, the use and storage of personal information is a thorny issue that new technologies such as social media sites have had to navigate. While their deep pockets to hire lawyers has typically helped companies such as Facebook keep their practices legal, they have still fallen afoul of countries that have excellent and less flexible privacy laws for their citizens such as Germany.

A 2017 report in The Verge (Toor, 2017) discussed Germany’s then-new rules on social media and unlawful content. This is a historical example; current obligations depend on the applicable law and jurisdiction. This legislation presents several difficulties such as disproportionately placing the onus of determining what constitutes hate speech on private companies and curbing free speech, as such companies are driven by profit motivation to utilize the cheapest available means, which can “only lead to privatized, unpredictable online censorship.”

References

Braucher, R. (1969). The Unconscionable Contract or Term. U. Pitt. L. Rev., 31, 337.

Mellinkoff, D. (2004). The Language of the Law. Wipf and Stock Publishers.

Pérez, M. F. (2017, June, 29) Germany: Will 30 June be the day populism killed free speech? EDRi Retrieved from https://edri.org/germany-will-30-june-be-the-day-populism-killed-free-speech/

Toor, A. (2017, June 30) Germany passes controversial law to fine Facebook over hate speech The Verge Retrieved from https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/30/15898386/germany-facebook-hate-speech-law-passed