When you’re drafting a document, the audience matters. You say different things, in different ways, to different people.
Here’s a corollary: When you ask someone to draft a document, tell the person who the intended audience is. Otherwise, it’s inconceivable you’ll receive a useful draft.
Suppose another lawyer at your corporation emails you: “Please send me a short description of the Jarndyce case.”
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Easy enough. The lawyer knows generally about the Jarndyce case, so there’s no need to repeat the basic facts. The lawyer is by definition a lawyer, so it’s permissible to use words like “collateral estoppel” in your note. And surely the lawyer wants forward-looking information, so you’ll include some thoughts on what’s likely to happen in the case over the next few months.
You send the email and the lawyer writes back: “I think you should simplify this. I want to send a status report to business leaders, and this doesn’t hit the mark.”
Of course it doesn’t hit the mark! It wasn’t aimed at that mark because you didn’t specify that mark when you asked for the memo.
This time around, the email will be quite different. The email will remind everyone, in simple language, what the case is about, when it was filed, when it might go to trial, and other basic information. Not a peep about “collateral estoppel” in this document.
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Or you receive this response to your original email: “I think you should simplify this. It’s for use as a press release.”
Oh! That’s entirely different!
A press release has nothing in common with either of the first two emails. Now, you need some information: Are we issuing this press release unprompted? Or are we using the statement only reactively, in response to a press inquiry?
In either event, things that are written for an ignorant public audience will be very different from things written for internal readers.
The words you write will vary depending on who the readers are.
Just as you would never write a document without thinking about your audience, never ask for a draft without telling the scrivener the nature of the intended audience.
There’s an old saying: “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else.”
Here’s the corollary: “If you don’t know who you’re writing for, you’ll write the wrong thing.”
When you’re asking people to prepare written documents, tell them the audience for the piece.
Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at [email protected].