Some helpful new research just came out on improving how we talk about access to justice issues: the IAALS Justice Narrative Project. Before jumping into the practical tips this new report gives us to communicate more effectively, which I will tackle in next month’s post, I thought this would be a good time to revisit my periodic “banned words” series to highlight some bad habits we should first clear out of our communications closets.
As has been true from the start of this series, while this may seem like an unserious exercise, those of us who care about access to justice use a lot of language that does our cause no favors. These are words and phrases that are not used with any ill intent, but either do not mean anything beyond the proverbial choir (which is much smaller than most of us assume), don’t necessarily mean what we think, inadvertently can turn people off, or are just wrong.
Acronyms and Jargon
Just about everyone uses acronyms in work or friend groups, where people in the know immediately understand what we are referencing, and there is nothing wrong with that in that context. They make our conversations more efficient by not having to spell everything out all the time when we all know what we are talking about.
We really love to use acronyms in the access to justice space, though. And with rare exceptions, people who do not regularly live in this space (i.e., most people!) have no idea what we are talking about.
Some, like “LSO” and “SRL,” make the banned list for other good reasons noted later in this post. Others, like the alphabet soup of acronyms used to refer to legal aid organizations in our community, are meaningless to people outside of those regularly working in this space.
Jargon, which also often involves acronyms for good measure, creates similar problems, and our professional habit of using legalese makes us more prone to it than most. There are, of course, many times where we need to use a legal term to be accurate, but many more where it’s just a bad habit.
Why does it matter, you may ask? In most instances, people will just tune us out when they don’t know what we are talking about, which is a missed opportunity but usually carries no long-term damage. But it does not build trust with our audience, and it can be much worse than that if people misinterpret what we are trying to say or even take offense.
A recent nonprofit blog post, appropriately titled “Stop Losing People With Your Language,” explains the problems with jargon well and offers some good practical tips for leaving jargon behind.
My quick suggestion: the next time you are about to casually toss out an acronym or use jargon in this work, think about your audience. Are you sure they know what you are referring to when you use it? When in doubt, and that frankly should be most instances, don’t do it!
Repeat Offender Words and Phrases
Legal Services Organization/LSO
“Legal Services Organization,” now often shortened to LSO, is an outdated reference to the legal aid of yore.
Every law firm or corporate law department, and many other legal professionals, provide legal services as part of their work and thus can be called legal services organizations. But many people still use this term to describe legal aid specifically, and we should not be surprised that most of our profession and the rest of the world have no idea what we are talking about when we do that.
When we are talking about legal aid, we should just say legal aid. But let’s save the term “legal services organizations” to refer to the broader group of entities that provide legal services—law firms, legal aid, in-house legal departments, public defenders, and other alternative providers—and skip the term LSO altogether.
Justice Gap
This term, generally used to describe the gap between legal needs in the community and available services, poses problems on two fronts.
First, it is not used consistently even among those who might understand what we are talking about. Some use it to describe the unmet need for legal aid among low-income and disadvantaged people, while others use it to describe the shortage of affordable services for the middle class, and some others mean all of the above.
The second and bigger issue is that the term is largely meaningless to people outside the core access to justice community.
Instead of using this term that is unlikely to be understood by our target audience, it is better to describe more specifically the gap we are referring to when we say it (e.g., “most Americans who need legal aid can’t get it today due to insufficient funding” or “middle class Americans struggle to find affordable legal help when they need it today.”)
Low Bono
Just when I think this one may be behind us, it rears its head again. It is still used by some in our community as shorthand for a lawyer, firm, or program that provides more affordable services for the many middle-class people and small businesses who find themselves effectively shut out of the traditional market for legal services.
Two ongoing problems with this one. First, if you are the potential client, low bono is a meaningless phrase at best. And second, once it is understood, would you want a service that was described that way?
The better way of describing it for all concerned, depending on what you are referring to, is: (1) affordable and flexible service options; or (2) sliding-scale pricing depending on income/ability to pay.
Self-Represented Litigant/SRL
This is a newer yet important addition to this list. It is an illusion to suggest that people proceeding on their own in court, which is usually not by choice, are “represented” in any reasonable sense of the word.
Yes, there is a small group of litigants who consciously choose to act as their own lawyer even when they have the option of being represented, and perhaps it is appropriate to call them “self-represented.” But that is not the reason most people are proceeding without lawyers today.
The great majority of people are unrepresented because (a) they can’t find affordable legal help, or (b) they appropriately believe it is unnecessary to be represented for some or all aspects of their case (e.g., minor traffic tickets and other lower-stakes matters, or routine procedural parts of otherwise more complex or higher-stakes cases).
The reality today is that there is not nearly enough free and affordable help to go around, leaving far too many people struggling to proceed on their own in the court system. We need to continue to work towards ensuring that all people have realistic access to the level of legal help they need to get a fair shake.
In the meantime, we need to stop kidding ourselves by calling people who are proceeding on their own “self-represented”. I am not suggesting we go back to calling them “pro se”, which effectively is the same thing in more confusing Latin form. Instead, we should call them what they really are: “unrepresented litigants” or “people without lawyers.”
The Grandaddy of Them All and Still #1—Stop Calling People Nonlawyers!
You don’t hear doctors calling others “non-doctors,” dentists referring to others as non-dentists, or CPAs calling people “non-CPAs”. It sounds silly to even say those words. They instead call others in their profession by who they are: nurses, dental hygienists, bookkeepers, etc.
I could go on here, but you get the point: calling everyone who is not a lawyer a “non” is a uniquely bad habit of lawyers.
As the business of law and the delivery of legal services gets more complex by the day, there are a host of other legal and business professionals who increasingly play integral roles in any successful law firm, legal aid organization, or law department who are key players in the broader delivery of legal services.
We can strike a better path by calling others in our profession by who they are whenever we can. And when the situation calls for speaking of others in our profession more generally, we can call them “other legal professionals” (paralegals, the many other law firm professional roles), “other professionals” (when talking more broadly about other business professionals like accountants and technology roles), “other advocates,” or just “other people.”
The bottom line is there is a better alternative every time, and we need to send the non-lawyer term off into the sunset once and for all. There has been some recent progress on this front, but not nearly enough. We can and need to do better!
The Path to Better Communication
When we’re talking to others in the “club,” these language issues may not seem like they are such a big deal. But if we want to reach the goal of a justice system that is truly fair and accessible for all, our club needs to get a whole lot bigger. Clarity in what we are saying and proper respect for the people we are talking about remain great places to start!
Next month, I’ll talk more about the key findings of the new IAALS report and what we should say when we talk about access to justice, but let’s first work to break ourselves from these bad habits.