Commence
This word is unavoidable as a technical term in litigation: one commences an action under the Courts of Justice Act, RSO 1990, c C43, for example.

But don’t use the word in normal parlance or non-technical writing, where it sounds fussy and pompous.

She didn’t commence employment on whatever date; she started work.

While we’re on the subject, the academic term commencement for a graduation ceremony (so, the conclusion rather than beginning of one’s course of study) has always seemed strange to me – perhaps because it’s a Cambridge term, and more recently an American one. But …

Readers send me examples of bad things. I shudder and pass them on, so you will never commit the same grievous faults.

Arms length
You keep something or someone at arm’s length in order to ensure independence or impartiality. Note that apostrophe (and its placement; arms’ length is justifiable but not preferred).

If you want to turn the phrase into an adjective, you’ll need to add a hyphen (even if you think that looks a bit over-punctuated): an arm’s-length transaction.

A French-Canadian boss of mine always pronounced it harm’s length, which had a certain unintended logic to it.…

All of these seen recently.

Action plan
I suppose there could be a plan to do nothing (an inaction plan?), but generally plan implies taking action — so the first element inaction plan is redundant.

Betwixt and between
They mean the same thing.

Yes, the phrase is used idiomatically to mean ‘at a loss’ or ‘unable to choose between alternatives’, but it has no place in legal drafting.

Just between in your contracts.

Relationship
A thoughtful reader points out that the –ship bit adds nothing.

Compare trusteeship or fellowship, where the suffix actually changes the meaning …

One of CANLII’s lesser known resources is its Foreign reported decisions database which “includes some decisions issued by foreign courts and tribunals and that are of special interest for Canadian law.”

For example, should you be interested in Browne v. Dunn (1893), 6 R. 67 (a decision sufficiently challenging to find online that someone created a dedicated website for it) you can find it on CanLII.

While the collection of foreign decisions is not large, CanLII will on request add cases that are of interest to Canadian legal practitioners.

(And for all your regular British case law needs, there is …

These aren’t always confined to lawyers; they permeate the e-mail and speech of law clerks, legal assistants and students.

Advised
The phrase Please be advised that … has to be one of the most leaden openings of all time. Cut to the chase and just convey the actual information, without the pointless preamble.

And advise in this context is, well, ill-advised. On stylistic grounds, for one. It’s pompous to say Please advise me if … when you could just say Please tell me if … or Let me know if ...

It’s also not a great idea to extend …

We’ve had lots on bad business jargon in this space, but other fields of endeavour have also been polluting the language.

Surface
This is from the world of technology, a jargon-generator if ever there was one.

As in This AI solution will surface all the relevant case law.

Please, techies, stop calling every product or service a solution for one thing; but also, stop using the verb surface in this way.

Things surface, but one does not generally surface things. Here, it means nothing more than plain old find.

Just say that.

Transparency
Blame NGOs and civil …

This was cited in Guthrie’s Guide as an example of bad business jargon, without much additional commentary.

Because of its ubiquity, this dreadful phrase merits a few words.

Ubiquity, for starters. The phrase appears in nearly 5,000 posts on Lexology, which to me suggests one word: hackneyed (and therefore to be avoided).

It’s also unnecessary, as there are perfectly good, plain alternatives: lessons or important points come to mind (but, please, not learnings).

And if you have readers in the UK, you may occasion some scratched heads: a takeaway is a take-out meal or the establishment from whence it …

This was based on a post on the CALL listserv; many thanks to Michèle LeBlanc of the Université de Moncton for the information.

The Centre de traduction et de terminologie juridiques (CTTJ) at the Université de Moncton has been working on a project to translate important unilingual Canadian court decisions into Canada’s other official language. The project currently focuses primarily on the areas of criminal law and family law.

The translated cases are available here: https://www6.umoncton.ca/cttj/jurisprudence-pancanadienne/ and can be searched by style of cause, file number or jurisdiction. The translations can also be found on CanLII.

— Susannah Tredwell…

Lawyers find it difficult to use one word when they could use two. Here are some further examples.

Forward progress
All progress is forward-looking; that’s why it’s progress.

Null and void
The two elements mean the same thing, so there is no need to use both.

As a drafting point, it’s a dangerous phrase. If doing (or not doing) something renders a contract null and void (or terminated), you may not be able to sue the breaching party because there is no longer any underlying obligation. You are better to say that the non-breaching party is relieved from performance …

In an op-ed piece prompted by the Ontario government’s threatened invocation of the Charter’s ‘notwithstanding’ clause (s 33), Professor Lissa Paul of Brock University mused about the prevalence of similar ‘useless adverbs’ in student writing: ‘”Notwithstanding” and the Transition Word Epidemic’, Globe & Mail, 21 September 2018.

Wise words. The ‘infestation’ of so-called ‘transition words’ in undergraduate essays is also a weakness found in legal writing, which is replete with adverbs ‘feigning the existence of non-existent connections’.

Odds are, if you’re using words like additionally, furthermore, moreover and nevertheless to connect sentences, paragraphs or sections …