Legal writing deals with serious subjects and tends to have a formal tone. However, the use of the internet and email can affect this formality:

• Online or email text often appears less formal simply because of the medium – the reader will perceive the text to be less formal.
• Writers often take a less formal approach when creating online or email text – the writer will perceive the text to be less formal.

Reduced formality can be useful when it removes stilted and unapproachable language from legal writing, but can also lead to problems:

• A reader may not understand the seriousness or potential effect of an online document (eg when signing a document online, users often click ‘I agree’ without reading the document).
• A writer may be lured by the ease of online writing and distribution to be too casual in both the substance and style of their work.

If writing legal text for electronic distribution, take the same care and do the same checks that you would in a hard-copy document. Printing the document out to read through it before sending it is one way of slowing down the process and spotting errors.