Do I need to be a lawyer to proofread law books for publishers?

Proofreading Law Books

1/10/2012

You don’t necessarily need to have a legal background to proofread law books. If you’re comfortable with often dense and highly complex material, huge numbers of footnotes, and lengthy citations – and the legalese doesn't scare you to death – then this could be the work for you!

The many faces of the law
The law covers just about every aspect of human life, so the books on offer tackle a multitude of subjects.

I’ve worked on legal books with a focus on public health, marine conservation, labour law, genetic resources, constitution building, piracy, family law, comparative law, European law, intellectual property rights, religion, climate change, competition law and cartelism, and environmental governance.

Since I came to this work with a strong background in the social sciences, it suited me down to the ground.

I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by the readability of most of the law books I’ve proofread. They’re often written by lawyers for lawyers (or by law professors for their colleagues and students) so you won’t be confronted by the impenetrable sea of words that often appear in legal documents.

The authors aim to communicate with their readership just like any other writer. If you have experience of proofreading high-level academic books and journals, legal work shouldn’t present you with a problem.

What are clients looking for?
Rather than making assumptions based on my own experience, I asked one of my publisher clients to tell me what she looks for in a legal proofreader. Here’s a summary of our discussion:

Proofreaders need to be unafraid of (learning) complex legal citation styles, for example OSCOLA or Bluebook, as well as versions of these that have been adapted according to author preference.

Just like any style guide (APA, Harvard, etc.), legal citation systems have their own peculiarities that may seem overly pedantic to those outside the profession. OSCOLA, for example, demands that, when citing a journal article, round brackets should be placed round the year of publication when a volume number is included, but square brackets employed when the volume number is omitted.

Yes, part of your brain may want to shout, “Oh, please, there’s more to life than this!” but if you’re the sort of person who can’t shut that down and opt instead to put on your bracket-pedant’s hat, don’t proofread law books.
Attention to detail: My client couldn't emphasise enough how absolutely crucial it is to attend to the detail. Law books contain a plethora of Latin terms – some that need to be italicised, some that don’t, some spelled out in full, some abbreviated.

The books are always heavily referenced with primary and secondary book and journal sources and enough case law to make you feel like you could direct the next episode of Law & Order. All of this means there’s bound to be an extra chunk of incorrectly rendered names and document titles.

Concordance software (such as TextSTAT) has come to my rescue more times that I care to mention. I always strip the content from the PDF of my proofs into a Word document and spend an hour checking a complete list of every word in the book, focusing on the proper nouns. It’s impossible (for me, anyway) to rely on my memory.
Recognition of house brief: So, you've put on your pedant’s hat and got stuck into your legal citation style, wrapped your head around the author’s idiosyncrasies, and made sure all the cited authors’, judges’, defendants’ and plaintiffs’ names are spelled correctly.

Just when you think you've got it licked, your client asks you to “only make changes that are necessary” in order to minimize typesetting costs at second-proof stage. This means you need to know when to amend, when to leave alone and when to query. It’s a tough one, and something that can arise when working on typeset page proofs in any subject area.

With law, in my experience, it’s a little trickier because some things that you might let go in a politics book must be dealt with in a legal text. That’s just the way it is. My way round this is to build up a close working relationship with the in-house editor so that you really come to understand what’s important and what’s not.

And the OSCOLA bracketing may be considered a must, whereas going for consistency with regards to text mentions of both “para” and “paragraph” may be determined by how close to each other the occurrences appear on the page.

Your client may decide not to worry about them in one book but change them according to proximity in another. Common sense is critical, but so is talking to your client to make sure you know what they want every time you take on a new project.
Consistency, consistency, consistency: Because of the density of legal texts, and the heavy level of citation, consistency is the thing that’s most likely to have slipped at writing and copy-editing stage.

My client told me that ultimately this is what she’s looking for her proofreader to provide her with. Spelling, formatting, style – all of these have to be consistent so that the content of the book offers clarity to the reader.

The subject matter can be highly complex, so the last thing the publisher wants to send to press is a book full of inconsistencies that may confuse rather than inform.

Other points to bear in mind
Footnotes (or endnotes) tend to be lengthy. Sometimes it can feel like there’s more text in the notes than in the main body of the book.

Quoted matter tends to be more expansive than in the social science books I work on. This is because the author has often felt it necessary to illustrate a key point by quoting large extracts from a judgment, act, bill, or other legal document.
Every now and then, the two come together in a sort of perverse harmony – a footnote taking up three-quarters of a page might include a list including quoted matter within which there is further quoted matter, within which there is a list. Keeping an eye on the formatting and what goes with what is essential.
Proofreading for publishers is not always the same as proofreading for independent clients such as researchers and students, and this is worth bearing in mind. In the non-publisher client arena, the boundaries between copy-editing and proofreading are often more blurry. If your client is expecting you to have a background knowledge of the law so that you might highlight factual errors, then a relevant qualification and/or career background will be important.

Should you?
Actually, none of the above issues is problematic as long as you have a good concentration span and you aren’t surrounded by distractions.

Distractions and proofreading don’t tend to go well together at any time, but with legal proofreading you may end up gnawing off your own arm if you don’t have the space to do the work without interruption.

Working with law books is not unlike working with any other specialism (social science, STM, fiction) in that you need to be able to work within a framework of industry-recognized citation conventions, house style guides, and author preferences, while all the time employing a good old-fashioned dose of common sense.

Talking to your client so that you understand what’s expected is crucial whatever kind of work you’re doing because only in that way will you understand the implications of your mark-up.

When I was first approached with an offer to work in this field, I accepted it with some trepidation. A few years on, I can honestly say that I thoroughly enjoy it. Proofreading law books can be a rewarding and highly informative experience.

As the world changes, so does the law. Globalization, public health awareness, climate change, and the birth of the internet have given rise to new dimensions within the law and I rather like getting paid to read about them.