Research Assessment #6

Date:​ ​10/24/2019

Topic:​ ​Law

Citation:

Siegel, Alan, director. Let's Simplify Legal Jargon. TED, 2010,

www.ted.com/talks/alan_siegel_let_s_simplify_legal_jargon?language=en.

Analysis:

One of my friends recently recommended the TedxTalk Let’s Simplify Legal Jargon
to me and since I want to pursue a legal career, I decided to watch it as well as submit it as a
research assessment. At the beginning of the video, the speaker, Alan Siegel talks about how
public officials and leaders will write laws extremely complex, making it hard for the public
to understand them. I thought this was funny because my mentor often says that one of his
professors in law school would tell his class that if lawyers ever start to lose jobs they should
just write a law so people would need to hire them in order to understand it. Although I
often laughed about this, this video made me want to look at it deeper. I believe this could be
a fairly interesting to write about for my Original Work. Since attorneys are expensive to
hire, some people resort to using online templates to write their wills or other contracts. In
fact, when I was writing the drafts for my mock contracts last year, I fully depended on the
ones online. There are obvious advantages and disadvantages for those who use these, one
being that they save money but also do not receive full legal counsel.
The speaker moves on to talk about how he has simplified contracts for multiple
companies and they are now using those instead. This allows for consumers to know what
exactly is the company wants them to do and what they are signing themselves into. They do
not have to sit through pages of complex material and rather can understand for themselves
what the contract is talking about. Although this is better for the consumers, this may lead to
a decrease in attorneys, especially in contract law. This would put lawyers out of work and in
return lead to an increase in unemployment. I believe the only types of attorneys that would
truly thrive in this environment would be those who practice litigation. Criminal lawyers
would definitely still have jobs and possible constitutional, immigration, and medical
malpractice lawyers. This made me question, what happens next? Where do all these people
without jobs go?
For my Original Work (or possibly another research assessment if there is not
enough data), I would like to look into alternate opportunities for attorneys when this
situation does come about. I could look into possible jobs and create a guide or I could
research a system that laws schools could implement. Though simplifying legal jargon would
definitely help the public, it will end up hurting attorneys and there should be a back up. I
believe this would be an interesting Original Work topic. Other possible questions that I
have that would serve as great potential topics are:

● Why is the professionalism or the way the words are worded important when
writing laws?
○ Since people are finding alternate ways to word contracts, I feel that it
is important to understand why they are written the way that they are
in the first place.
● If contracts were to be simplified, what effect will this have on the economy?
How will this negatively and positively impact the public?
● In what other ways could the job of an attorney be simplified? Are there
certain services that lawyers provide that the public does not necessarily need?
● If legal jargon is simplified, will this carry over to the medical field? How will
this impact medical malpractice law?
● Will companies feel “hesitant” to sign contracts with consumers?
○ I believe that because contracts are so complex some business may rely
on the fact that no one is willing to read it. This leads people signing
away rights they don't even realize. However, since everything will be
more transparent, there may be some things companies don't want
people to know.
● Will companies be “exposed” more? Meaning, will companies be less discreet
about the things they do?
● Will this lead to a loss in business?

These are all topics that I plan on exploring. I believe they are both interesting and
important to the public. Hopefully one of these work out and I can write a full length paper
as my Original Work. I also need to ask my mentor for memos so that maybe those can spark
some interest in a research topic.
Transcript:

So, basically we have public leaders, public officials who are out of control; they are writing
bills that are unintelligible, and out of these bills are going to come maybe 40,000 pages of
regulations, total complexity, which has a dramatically negative impact on our life. If you're a
veteran coming back from Iraq or Vietnam you face a blizzard of paperwork to get your
benefits; if you're trying to get a small business loan, you face a blizzard of paperwork.

What are we going to do about it? I define simplicity as a means to achieving clarity,
transparency and empathy, building humanity into communications. I've been simplifying
things for 30 years. I come out of the advertising and design business. My focus is
understanding you, and how you interact with the government to get your benefits, how you
interact with corporations to decide whom you're going to do business with, and how you
view brands.

So, very quickly, when President Obama said, "I don't see why we can't have a one-page,
plain English consumer credit agreement." So, I locked myself in a room, figured out the
content, organized the document, and wrote it in plain English. I've had this checked by the
two top consumer credit lawyers in the country. This is a real thing. Now, I went one step
further and said, "Why do we have to stick with the stodgy lawyers and just have a paper
document? Let's go online."

And many people might need help in computation. Working with the Harvard Business
School, you'll see this example when you talk about minimum payment: If you spent 62
dollars for a meal, the longer you take to pay out that loan, you see, over a period of time
using the minimum payment it's 99 dollars and 17 cents. How about that? Do you think your
bank is going to show that to people? But it's going to work. It's more effective than just
computational aids. And what about terms like "over the limit"? Perhaps a stealth thing.
Define it in context. Tell people what it means.

When you put it in plain English, you almost force the institution to give the people a way, a
default out of that, and not put themselves at risk. Plain English is about changing the
content. And one of the things I'm most proud of is this agreement for IBM. It's a grid, it's a
calendar. At such and such a date, IBM has responsibilities, you have responsibilities.
Received very favorably by business.

And there is some good news to report today. Each year, one in 10 taxpayers receives a
notice from the IRS. There are 200 million letters that go out. Running through this typical
letter that they had, I ran it through my simplicity lab, it's pretty unintelligible. All the parts
of the document in red are not intelligible. We looked at doing over 1,000 letters that cover
70 percent of their transactions in plain English. They have been tested in the laboratory.
When I run it through my lab, this heat-mapping shows everything is intelligible. And the
IRS has introduced the program.

There are a couple of things going on right now that I want to bring to your attention. There
is a lot of discussion now about a consumer financial protection agency, how to mandate
simplicity. We see all this complexity. It's incumbent upon us, and this organization, I
believe, to make clarity, transparency and empathy a national priority. There is no way that
we should allow government to communicate the way they communicate. There is no way
we should do business with companies that have agreements with stealth provisions and that
are unintelligible.

So, how are we going to change the world? Make clarity, transparency and simplicity a
national priority. I thank you.