Transfer notes

One of the most frequent challenges directed at stock transfer lawyers is to produce material in “plain English”. A combination of woolly-mindedness and reliance on precedents has encouraged the production of documents that are not only full of jargon but horribly long as well.

There are, however, one or two important points to bear in mind before we lurch into a lower-case, user-friendly world. Technical terms, long-winded phrases and so on have, for good or ill, acquired a specific meaning which can be predicted. Lawyers need ultimately to be judged on whether their provisions work, or not. I would prefer to be embarrassed and explain what the gobbledegook means than explain why an “accessible” piece of text does not have the meaning intended.

And then again, detail can have its virtues. This is particularly true of consultation documents. Tenants will only be certain that the council’s promises will be met if those promises are spelled out in black and white on the printed page. Three years after transfer a tenant needs to be able to put a finger on page 64, paragraph 3 and demand action, rather than seek to persuade a new landlord that an attractive, bland phrase meant this rather than that.

By all means, challenge lawyers to justify complexity and length, but remember that there might, just might, be method in their madness.