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Christopher Balmford - biography
Christopher Balmford, a former lawyer, is the founder and Managing Director of Cleardocs. He is also:
- the honorary president of Clarity, an international association promoting plain legal language. Clarity produces a journal, Clarity, the only international journal devoted to plain language. See www.clarity-international.net
- the founder and Managing Director or a plain-language consultancy business, Words and Beyond.
Christopher has worked on several demonstration rewrites of legislation, notably, with Professor Joseph Kimble (USA) and Phil Knight (Canada) the Human Rights Commission Bill for South Africa's Minister of Justice.
Christopher has written many articles, and presented many papers, about plain-language.
Words and Beyond
Words and Beyond provides plain-language consulting services:
- training on: plaing language, grammar punctuation, email etiquette etc.
- document writing, rewriting, and editing services.
- developing and reviewing style guides.
- clear-communication cultural-change programs.
A highlight is the 2 years Christopher spent seconded to AMP in a plain-language, cultural-change role.
Clients include 10 government bodies, 20 public listed companies, 8 of Australia's top-10 national law firms, the Australian Stock Exchange, the Australian Investments and Securities Commission, the Labour Organization of the United Nations, and the European Central Bank.
Cleardocs
Cleardocs, provides ready-to sign legal document packages. The 21,000 Cleardocs customers in Australia include accountants, lawyers, financial planners, and some retail customers. The hallmarks of the Cleardocs brand are "clarity, simplicity, and ease of use". The document packages Cleardocs provides are in plain language.
Background
Christopher became involved in plain-language when he worked at the Law Reform Commission of Victoria, after 3 years as a solicitor with Baker & McKenzie.
The Commission's work on plain language, including discussion papers, reports and demonstration rewrites, led to the legal profession accepting that plain language could be accurate, certain, and precise. In turn, this led businesses and government organisations to demand plain-language documents.
