Million Dollar Words, Million Dollar Representation?

Posted By Kyle Junginger, Oct 2, 2012

After three years of law school and countless years of practice, lawyers can easily fall prey to the belief that legalese makes the world go round. While the use of legalese may not inhibit the everyday interactions between attorneys, it can result in serious barriers when interacting with clients.

Recent research from Princeton University suggests that a reader’s judgment of an author’s intelligence relates more to the reader’s own level of understanding of the piece rather than the sophistication of the author’s word choice. In the study, the length of words was manipulated as a proxy for complexity and the font used in the writing samples was altered to represent fluency and ease of understanding. The findings suggested a negative correlation between writing complexity and the perceived intelligence of the author, while fluency had a positive effect on perceived intelligence.

Even though this research focused solely on perceptions of written as opposed to oral communication, and did not focus on the legal sector, one can easily imagine how the basic findings might apply to an attorney’s interactions with a client.

While it is a common belief within the legal profession that complex verbiage is an indication of intelligence, confusion and frustration are usually not far behind. It is never in an attorney’s or client’s interest to render the client confused or frustrated when talking with an attorney.

Although a lawyer’s competence does not rely on his client’s perceptions of him, an attorney should still be concerned about how a client perceives his intelligence because an attorney serves as more than just a legal specialist for that client. Today’s attorney also serves as an advisor and counselor for a client’s emotional needs, among other things;  to serve these needs, trust and confidence are extremely important. If a client perceives his lawyer to be highly intelligent, that could ease the path towards developing trust and confidence in the attorney’s work and counseling abilities.

A client comes to an attorney for his or her legal expertise. Unfortunately, many attorneys end up showcasing this expertise with complex legal jargon and terminology that are likely to baffle a lay client. Despite this inclination, research suggests that it is more beneficial for lawyers to make sure that the client actually understands the possible legal concepts and uses language that makes these ideas approachable and understandable to the client. An attorney’s goal should be to ensure that the client fully understands the issues and potential options instead of focusing on using a “thesaurus vocabulary.”

While it may seem that it is in everyone’s best interest for an attorney to drastically simplify legal concepts for clients, law is still a highly precise field in which legal terminology may be the best way to accurately articulate a legal concept to the client. The attorney has a duty to make sure that the client is fully informed when making decisions and it is possible that using non-legal terminology will not capture the complexities of the legal concept.

As with all law, there is no clear rule for when it is more beneficial to use legal terminology or when using more layperson-friendly language is the better approach. The finesse of a good lawyer is being able to determine which is best under the circumstances, while keeping in mind that a client will not necessarily relate big words with intelligence. A satisfied client is one that understands what the attorney has said and has a solid understanding of the legal situation.

For more information about the impact of word choice on fluency and perceptions of intelligence see Daniel M. Oppenheimer, Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly, 20 Applied Cognitive. Psychol. 139, (2006).