Over the last decade, a movement in favor of plain English over legalese has been quietly building up in the legal academia and workplace. 

Judge Mark P. Painter of the Ohio First District Court of Appeals has been one of the staunchest supporters and activists of this movement.  Because he practices what he preaches, Painter’s opinions are popular both in and out of the courtroom.

Rick Slee, former CLE director at the Ohio State Bar Association, said at a 2005 event that the funny thing about law school is that they teach you to talk in a secret language. 

Judge Painter said that it seems that judges are writing for lawyers, and lawyers are writing for judges.  He notes that, in the legal arena, no one writes for the laymen whose interests are primarily at stake in any litigation.

Judge Painter thinks that this happens because one learns to write by reading what others have written.  By learning law from studying court decisions, law students start following the legalese writing style of past lawyers.  He holds that a lawyer should write for judges, not like judges.

According to Judge Painter, if a lawyer can’t summarize his case within 75 words, then he doesn’t understand the case very well and neither would any judge.

In his popular book, Judge Painter proposes 40 rules for improving the art of legal writing.   He has asked lawyers to stop writing as if they are slumped over a Dickensian desk using quill pens.

One cannot agree more.

The Judge has more than 330 published decisions.  He emphasizes his points with quotes from sources such as movies, pop culture, and the literature of the absurd.

In fact, one of the judge’s recent opinions contained a quote from Lewis Carroll’s famous character Humpty Dumpty!  Painter wrote, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean."