Improving the Accessibility of Legal Language through Community Engagement

Citizens’ understanding of law is often characterized by difficulty in processing complex technical information. In this study, the main object of investigation is a concrete example of a collaborative project implemented in order to render legal information more accessible to the target readers (mainly lay people). More specifically, this analysis focuses on the section of the Oregon State Bar website called 'For the public' and aims to discuss the popularization techniques which may be used in this type of digital environment in order to enhance the understanding of legal texts by citizens. This work concerns an area of research which may be defined as Activist Applied Linguistics, in that it aims at conducting Applied Linguistics together with community partners to affect positive social change. It also develops along the lines of an approach which can be labeled as Applied Societal Discourse Analysis, given its applied nature and its societal implications. The findings show that the proposals made by the actors involved include the recontextualization of the information, the simplification of morpho-syntactical features, and the use of infographics, which may help citizens to understand the key terminology and visualize the main procedures described on the website.