As a continuation of my public service, I offer the following additional translations from Lawyer Talk to Plain English:
| Lawyer Talk | Plain English |
| Call me anytime that you have an issue, and I will direct it to the best person at the firm. | Always call me instead of one of my partners, so I can be sure that I continue to get the originating credits for your account. |
| Your case is very interesting. | Your case will be very expensive. |
| I estimate that the fee will be between $5,000.00 and $7,000. | The fee will be at least $7,000. |
| You need a corporate reorganization. | My kids need braces. |
| I would like to introduce you to my associate who is going to be helping me on the file. | I would like to introduce you to my associate who is going to do all of the work on this. |
| It is our firm policy that we obtain a deposit from all new clients. | I don’t trust you. |
| John is our expert on leasing. | John is the only leasing lawyer that we have. |
| Murray handles our business succession matters. | Murray is old and his clients are old. |
| Call me anytime that you have an issue, and I will direct it to the best person at the firm. | Always call me first so I can docket some time before I turn it over to the person who will actually do the work. |
| We delegate the work down to the least expensive resource. | We give the boring stuff to the juniors. |
| At our firm, we believe in work life balance. | We think that our lawyers’ spouses should spend more time with the kids. |
| At our firm we offer mentoring by senior lawyers. | We will assign someone to be sure that you are docketing all of your time. |
| We encourage our associates to participate in business development. | You can write articles for publication under the name of a partner. If you are lucky, we will state in the small print that you ‘assisted in the research.’ |
| We hire back almost all of our articling students. | We make them play the Hunger Games for three years and then fire most of them to make room for new ones. |
| As of Friday, Jack is no longer employed by the firm. We thank him for his contribution to the firm and wish him well in his future endeavours. | We fired Jack. Within a few hours, the partners will have leaked their version of the story to the associates. The staff should know the details by Monday. |