I went to the PLAIN conference to give a talk on how lawyers can use non-text explanations (text tables, text boxes, and flowcharts) to explain legal topics. And I wanted to find out more about the plain language movement – an international version of plain English.

By the way, they’d prefer it if you didn’t say ‘movement’, even thought it is a movement. In the best sense of the word.

Non-text explanations summarise complexity and
draw readers into the text

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Getting lawyers to use non-text explanations

My talk covered my experience of getting lawyers to use non-text explanations in client updates and newsletters. The talk included real-world examples: from simple non-text explanations (the humble text box) to the more exotic (now-to-then text tables; flowcharts). And all of the examples can be put together in MS Word.

Here’s the blurb from the conference document:

‘Most readers find non-text explanations (ie text tables and flowcharts) really useful, particularly in long text documents. Non-text explanations can summarise a complex concept quickly: once you understand the bigger picture it’s much easier to absorb the detailed text.

I’ve found that lawyers value non-text explanations when they see them (eg in legal journals or newspapers), but seldom produce them for their own updates. The problem seems to be partly confidence (lawyers worry that they’ll ‘dumb down’ a legal topic) and partly mechanics (lawyers find it fiddly to put together a neat flowchart).’

I also set out a few suggestions on what firms need to do to get lawyers to put more non-text explanations into their client updates (see link below for details).

A post-PowerPoint slideshow: no bullet-points; a single page ‘briefing agenda’ handout

I also took the opportunity to prepare slides and a handout in a post-PowerPoint way.

It’s a pretty simple idea, and it saves your audience from the misery of text-and-bullets presentations. Here’s my post ppt recipe:

• Keep bullet-points off the slides:
  Say ‘no’ to text-heavy, bullet-point-laden slideshows; they hurt your message. You know about the disease (death by PowerPoint), and you’ve read the books (‘Beyond bullet points’, ‘Presentation zen’). So step away from the bullet-points.
• Give your audience a one-page presentation summary:
  Have a look at the handout and slides (see the link below) and you’ll see the one-page briefing agenda (and accompanying detail sheets) that I gave to the audience. The single page briefing-agenda is better than a printouts of the slides: your audience sees the whole flow of your presentation on one page.

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A briefing agenda, detail pages, and clear slides (see link below to the handout and the slides)

When you’re presenting you don’t want the audience reading your slides. But if you put text up there, that’s what your audience will do.

A simple point, but worth re-stating…

Click the link below to get the briefing-agenda handout and the slides. But the slides are only included to illustrate the ‘post PowerPoint’ idea – you don’t need to print them out.

So when you go to print, just print pages 1-5 (the slides rock, but you don’t need to print them out; the handout gives you all the detail).

Click to download briefing-agenda and slides.

Make simple changes that clients will notice

It’s not hard to improve professional services client-updates and newsletters, and investment research reports. Most are virgin territory when it comes to scope for improvement. They’re the blank bits on the maps of unexplored continents of client service.

But improving updates, briefings, or any kind of written document (this includes emails and websites) does take focus. Our pet mnemonic may be able to help you with that focus.

Here it is: ‘Running Animals Beat Crawlers’. It picks up on several principles in our writing training, and will help you remember the following checklist:
– Relevance
– Actions
– Brevity
– Context.

Relevance

Two points here. Get the right information to the right people, and make it clear who a particular update is relevant to – in the first few words of that update.

The first point (send clients and prospects relevant content) is a bit airport-marketing-book. And it’s often over-stated as a concern or risk. Firms of all kinds bewail the fact that they don’t have clean and reliable list and client-preference data. Well, no-one (or almost no-one) has.

The good news about the second point (make it clear who needs to pay attention) is that it’s easy to do, and it doesn’t involve huge software-and-data projects. All you have to do is make it clear who your information is relevant to right up front – in the headline, on the cover, in the first sentence.

You might highlight that this is a development that’s particularly relevant to smaller firms, or firms that are involved in a certain type of business. Or maybe you can flag that this is information that compliance officers, or general counsel need to pay attention to. Or finance directors and plc-board members.

So there’s a lot to be said for doing what you can in about relevance in the (rather long) interval between where you are now, and an idealised clean-data future.

The flipside is the effect that poorly targetted updates can have. Imagine you’re a general counsel at a commercial property firm, and you receive update on disputes over leylandii hedges. Your regard for that real estate team might slip a few notches. Don’t laugh. It happened.

Actions

Highlight any actions that clients can take. If you can’t think of any appropriate actions, ask yourself why a client should read what you’re writing – and why you’re sending it to them.

If actions aren’t clear-cut, but you think it’s a development that your clients and prospects will care about, then make the implications clear. Maybe you can describe common pitfalls, areas of uncertainty, or how relevant rules are usually applied.

Or use scenarios to sketch out what the development might mean to different kinds of firms in different situations – a good technique where the situation is a bit murky. Scenarios help to turn abstract problems into specific situations – you might even think about testing the scenarios with a couple of friendly clients to see what they think. And they’ll like as not give you further ideas, or the confidence that you’re on the right track.

Whatever you do, avoid the most depressing final sentence ever… “we will watch these developments with interest”.

Brevity

Send clients the briefest possible summary and make it easy for them to request further information.

Context

Make the context clear for clients. Expert authors often forget that clients may not be as up to speed on the detail and background of a particular development. While you may have followed the events and issues around a specific development, clients may have had other things on their mind.

Think about whether it would be helpful to explain the background to new regulations, or other cases that have covered similar issues. It’s often a good idea to put some of this background in a box, or text table. Or you might use a decision tree, flow chart, or data, to help clients see the bigger picture.

Text tables show your readers that you’re trying to help.

Text tables give you a flexible way to sum up complexity. They’re a really helpful feature in any update, bulletin, article, newsletter, or seminar handout. Or pitch. Or pretty much any document that you can think of.

Clients value them as they summarise, and allow you to compare and contrast information.

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Clients find text tables useful, but authors
don’t use them as often as they could

They notice and remember text tables that highlight action points, explain pros and cons, or show the difference between old and new rules.

But many authors forget about tables or think they’re going to be too difficult to produce. We think that there are three reasons why expert-authors forget about text tables when they’re writing know-how updates:

• Text-only bias:
  If you’re used to thinking and writing great blocks of narrative text then a Word table is the last thing you’ll think of.
• Fear of Word, and it’s complex table-formatting tools:
  People find creating text tables in Word a pain because they’re not used to using Word’s table-formatting tools (and they haven’t got the benefit of automated Word templates).
• Internal design team and brand-and-design guidelines:
  At some firms, expert authors fight running battles with brand guidelines that don’t include helpful advice on how to format tables.

And here are some examples of how law firms can use text tables

We’ve put together a document that shows just how effective text tables and other non-text techniques (e.g. flowcharts and decision trees) are. It contains ten examples – to see our personal favourite click here.

Tame the Word-table beast: two helpful guides

We’re fans of text tables and what they can do. You can create timelines, rustle up a flowchart, or compare the new (or proposed) situation with the current state of play. But the way that Word creates text tables can seem a bit daunting.

Word’s powers are its weakness when it comes to text tables. It has very powerful text-table formatting tools, and some unhelpful default settings. Put these two factors together and it’s a cocktail of misery that puts lots of people off creating text tables. (Don’t be tempted to use Excel, by the way, as that’ll just create a different set of problems.)

But text-table help is at hand –  we’ve put together two pieces of advice to help you create clearer text tables:

a) One-page guide to five good table-features click here.
b) Detailed 15-minute video tutorial (see below).

A 15-minute video tutorial on creating text tables in Word

Now then, fear not – not every text table will take you 15 minutes. The tutorial is that long because:
– We’ve gone slowly and included every small step
– It’s basic Word rather than an automated Word-template.

If you click on the full-screen icon (bottom right of window below) you’ll see the video-tutorial at actual size (no zooms and pans to make you dizzy).

You’ll find it helpful to download the ‘five good text-table features’ guide first. It shows the table that’s created in the video with a list of the five tips, and it has a full-size version of the table that you an make your own notes on.