The Legal Englishes of Dispute Resolution Rules

The UK Jurisdiction Taskforce (UKJT) has published the UK's first Digital Dispute Resolution Rules (DDRR), which are aimed at facilitating the rapid resolution of commercial disputes, in particular those revolving around digital technology. On the other hand, the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) has published an updated version of its Arbitration Rules (LCIAR). This paper is aimed at exploring the differences in the language and style of these two international documents. On the one hand, it addresses the sector-specific language used; on the other hand, it explores the general comprehensibility of the two documents to the layperson. Legalese elements, if any, are brought to the fore and focused on, as well as technical words, in order to explore how these documents are intelligible. The paper findings highlight that the LCIAR heavily rely on legalese, whereas the DDRR present several instances of plain English. The reasons why this is possible could be found in the fact that the former are drafted by legal experts such as arbitral organisations, whereas the latter are mostly written by business and financial advisers. Also, the DDRR clearly cater for the needs of the businesses' new (digital) requirements.