Cooley Law School’s Kimble Center for Legal Drafting recently hosted a webinar that drew viewers from Poland, Nigeria, Canada, the UK and throughout the US.

The webinar — “Clear Legal Writing: New Resources, Technology, and Cases” — focused on various aspects of legal writing in plain language. It was cosponsored by Clarity, an international organization devoted to clear legal writing.

Prof. Emeritus Joseph Kimble shared details about his new (free) online book, Essentials for Drafting Clear Legal Rules, which he coauthored with Bryan Garner. The book reflects Kimble’s and Garner’s decades of work restyling the rules that govern all federal cases and that judges and lawyers use every day across the country offers concrete instruction, with abundant examples, for all forms of drafting.

Ivy B. Grey, chief strategy & growth officer of WordRake editing software, discussed how properly using writing technology can reinforce substantive legal writing skills and make it easier to revise and reorganize text.

Prof. Mark Cooney presented his research on cases in which courts have refused to enforce legal documents that were difficult to understand because of legalese and poor design.

The Kimble Center’s mission is to produce and make available — to attorneys and consumers —legal documents that are clear and easily understandable, documents unlike anything that the public is used to seeing from attorneys.

Additional information about the Kimble Center is available at www.cooley.edu/academics/kimble-center-writing.