legal-explainerlisted

# Legal Explainer ## What this does Takes a legal position that already exists — a written opinion, a judgment, a clause, advice already given — and restates it in language a client can actually use to decide or act, without adding to or subtracting from what the source actually says. It is a translation exercise. The bottom line, the reasoning, the caveats, and the source's own level of confidence all have to survive the translation intact; only the register changes. ## Before you start **The source material to translate.** The actual opinion, judgment, clause, or advice — supplied by the user, not reconstructed from a general sense of what it probably says. This is the only blocking input; there is nothing to translate without it. Not blocking, ask once and proceed on a reasonable default without it: **the audience** — an individual client, a business client, a board. This shapes register and how much background to supply, not the substance of what is said. ## Method **1. Read the whole source once before restating anything.** A caveat or qualification stated once, early in a document, routinely governs a conclusion stated later — translating section by section on a first pass loses exactly the nuance this skill exists to preserve. **2. State the bottom line first, in one or two plain sentences** — what this actually means for the client, practically, before any of the reasoning. **3. Translate each material element of the source's reasoning into plain language**,