Patent Document ID: 8794972
Application ID: 12187506

Base Claim:
1. A method of enhancing the readability of legal text placed upon a document wherein the legal text includes one or more sentences comprising the steps of: parsing the legal text by a processor to identify one or more portions of legal text for visual enhancement; selecting one or more visual markings from a set of visual markings that visually enhance individual portions of the legal text that was parsed using a processor when the one or more visual markings are applied to the legal text prior to placement of the legal text in the document and where the legal text contains English language grammar; applying one of the visual markings to the legal text such that at least one of the portions of the legal text are visually enhanced; wherein the one or more portions of legal text include at least one of (a) a primary if-then clause, (b) a secondary if-then clause, (c) a primary conjunction, (d) a secondary conjunction, (e) a primary exception, (f) a secondary exception, (g) a skeletal sentence portion, and (h) a cohesive phrase; and wherein the set of visual markings includes at least one of (i) a sentence termination marking, (ii) a primary if-then marking, (iii) an explicit if-then marking, (iv) a secondary if-then marking, (v) a primary conjunction marking, (vi) a secondary conjunction marking, (vii) a primary exception marking, (viii) a secondary exception marking, (ix) a skeletal sentence marking, and (x) a cohesive phrase marking in addition to text characters being added within the document without modification of the paragraphing employed in the document.

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Claim 2:
2. The method of claim 1 further comprising the steps of: displaying a legend with the legal text; and wherein the legend includes individual visual markings of the set of visual markings and respective descriptions of the individual visual markings.