Turn dense legal prose into clear, precise and reader-centred writing. Analyse your own drafts, run the Edit Gauntlet, and train your eye for drafting ambiguity.
Paste a clause, a paragraph of a judgment or your own memo. The analyser marks the usual suspects of legal prose. Click or press Enter on any highlight for a suggestion. It is a set of heuristics, not a judge: some flagged words are terms of art and should stay.
The clarity score blends sentence length, passive voice, legalese, doublets, nominalisations, padding and Flesch reading ease. Use it to compare drafts of the same text, not texts of different kinds.
Six passages per round, drawn at random from sixteen: judgments, contracts, notices, legal notices and memos. Rewrite each one. Your score combines the fall in flagged problems, the cut in length, and a meaning checklist: delete a fact the reader needs and you lose most of your points. Score 70 or more to keep your streak alive.
Eleven quick drills on drafting ambiguity: modifier scope, "and/or", "shall", "may" and "must", conjunctive and disjunctive lists, provisos and Explanations, cross-references, time periods and misplaced words. Ten points for each correct answer, plus a streak bonus.
Finish a Gauntlet round or a drill set to see your debrief here.
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Work by Bryan Garner, Richard Wydick, Martin Cutts, Kenneth Adams and the Plain English Campaign; Rudolf Flesch on reading ease. The lab names these authorities only; it does not quote them.
Heuristics used: passive = a form of "be" (or "stand") followed by a past participle; nominalisation = a listed noun formed from a verb, flagged when followed by "of"/"for" or after a weak verb such as "make" or "effect"; long sentence = more than 30 words. Expect some false positives and misses; that is part of the lesson.