Legal drafting

I analyse some of the key features of legal drafting: in particular I examine some of the characteristics distinguishing legislative drafting from contract drafting. I briefly outline some of the similarities and differences between the drafting style of the civil law system and that of the common law system. I examine the way legal drafting has evolved in the English-speaking world, largely as a result of the pressure exerted by proponents of the phenomenon known as ‘plain language’ which has impacted in many ways on how legal texts tend to be written these days. I briefly analyse possible developments for the future of legal drafting, with particular reference to the impact of information technology on the way legal drafters write. In the Appendix I attempt to identify some of the major strands in the vast literature on legal drafting.