Conveyancing is an art of drafting deeds and other legal documents. Therefore, a draftsman must properly understand essential elements of drafting. The draftsman is called upon to express substantive ideas gathered from his clients and to put it in legal form.

By on 13-11-2018

LEGAL DOCUMENTATION SIMPLIFIED WITH IDEOS

Conveyancing is an art of drafting deeds and other legal documents. Therefore, a draftsman must properly understand essential elements of drafting. The draftsman is called upon to express substantive ideas gathered from his clients and to put it in legal form. A draftsman must keep in mind the following essential elements of drafting :

• —There should be a complete internal consistency in expression of the thought and terminology is the sine quo non of good drafting. Normally, clients give their ideas to the draftsman in scattered way and the draftsman is required to put it in proper shape using accurate and suitable words. Different words to express same idea must be avoided because they may create confusion and misunderstanding. Different ideas have to be expressed differently while same idea must be expressed in a consistent way. The consistency of expression is the golden rule of drafting. It must never be left to the courts to reconcile the inconsistency because the courts may interpret the clauses in a manner contrary to the intention of the parties.

• Coherent arrangement.—The next essential ingredient of a drafting is a coherent arrangement of ideas translated into words meaning thereby the logical arrangement of ideas systematically.

• Normal language.—A draftsman must remember that the words and phrases used in the drafts must denote their normal sense. All the words of doubtful meaning should be avoided and phrases carrying a definite and well established meaning should be used. The selection of words should be done carefully and the words having more than one meaning should be avoided.

• —A draftsman is free to add his own punctuation but it would be wise always to bear in mind that he is not the author of the form, the meaning of which can be easily varied according to the punctuation used therein. There are some well recognised principles of drafting which a draftsman must remember. Such principle may be enumerated as under :

• —There must be clarity of thought and expression. The language of the draft must clearly reflect the real intention of the parties. The draft should be clear and unambiguous and must be such as to be understood even by illiterate parties not well versed in legal sophistry.

• —The design of a draft must be in conformity with the requirements of law exhibiting the intention of the parties, therefore, the draftsman should first hear the parties and, thereafter, must evolve a clear design of the theme and then proceed to complete the draft using suitable words in logical form leaving behind irrelevant and unnecessary matters.

• —The draft should be completed precisely to the point. It should be intelligible even to a layman. Words, likely to be misunderstood have to be avoided. Every potential grammatical ambiguity should be avoided and while preparing a draft, the rules and interpretation of documents and relevant case-law on the meaning of words and phrases should be kept in mind.

• —A draft is a means of communication of intention of the parties and, therefore, a document or instrument must be capable of communicating the real intention of the parties.

• Acquainted with relevant law.—Documents create and confer certain rights and obligations on the parties and, therefore, a draftsman is required to be acquainted with relevant law and there should be complete understanding of the intentions of the parties which he is going to express through his draft of a particular document. A draftsman must have the capacity to conceive the whole design of the draft and for that purpose he must have capacity to understand the fact.