What triggered this plain language activity in Australian law firms?
Australian law firms have chosen to see plain language as a benefit. In the other countries in which law firms are developing plain-language expertise, the relevant firms seem to be doing so in response to regulatory demand. For example, some major commercial law firms in the US are equipping themselves to write documents that meet the plain-language requirements of the SEC regulations. However, some of them seem to prefer the old style of writing for example. The history is very different in Australia where law firms adopted and committed to plain language in response to client demand. In Australia, clients started demanding plain-language documents as soon as the legal profession fell silent in its debate with the plain-language movement about the incompatibility of clarity on the one hand with accuracy, certainty, and precision on the other hand. That debate was lead, on the plain-language side, by the Law Reform Commission of Victoria under the direction of its Chairman David St L
