Individuals and groups around the world are lighting candles for plain language in legal documents. Authors David Mellinkoff, Bryan Garner, and Richard Wydick have long carried their torches, and they have lit the way. Professor Joe Kimble at the Thomas Cooley School of Law encouraged the Michigan Bar to be the first to establish a Plain English Committee. The Canadian Bar Association and the Canadian Bankers Association established a Joint Committee on Plain Language Documentation in 1988. The Australian law firm of Phillips-Fox threw out its precedent files and redrafted them in plain language, which delighted their existing clients and brought new ones.
Many states have laws requiring that consumer statutes be written in plain language.
The Federal Judicial Center in Washington teaches federal judges to write their opinions in plain English. Most clients do not understand gobbledygook and legalese. Neither do most judges have time to wade through endless paragraphs filled with useless formalisms, poorly reasoned sentences, and messy logic. Most legal documents contain long paragraphs with the strong points lost at the end or a stream of tautologies. If used more than ten times in a document, the fines are to be trebled.