As a public service, I offer the following translations from Lawyer Talk to Plain English:
| Lawyer Talk | Plain English |
| I will try to get it to you by Friday. | If you are lucky, you will have it at 11:59 pm on Friday night. |
| I will need to do a bit of research to confirm a few of the finer points. | I have absolutely no idea what the answer is. Hopefully one of the students will figure it out. |
| It will be much more cost-effective for you if I have my associate do the first draft. | I have no time for this. |
| Let me do all of the talking in the meeting | If you open your mouth, you are going to screw the whole thing up. |
| We will keep your personal lawyer in the loop on this and carefully consider her input. | She will never hear from us. |
| I know that you liked working with James last time, but I really think that Maria is the better person on this one. | James is an idiot. His days here are numbered. |
| I am not sure whether your accountant has the expertise required to work on this. | I want to refer you to someone who sends me business. |
| I have a call into opposing counsel but haven’t heard back yet. | I left him a voicemail 5 minutes ago when I got your email following up. |
| There was a small technical glitch in the filing. | I completely screwed up, but don’t worry it is fixable and I won’t bill you for fixing it. |
| I know that you liked working with Maria, but I really think that Samir is the best person for this one. | It turns out that Maria was also an idiot. |
| Perhaps we are not the best law firm for you. | You are the client from hell. Please get out! |