Forging Accessible and Legally Sound Policy Language

As a regional teaching institution with an open admissions model, Utah Valley University (UVU) is committed to making education accessible to all in its service region. To support this commitment, the UVU Policy Office strives to make university policy accessible to the university community. We are uniquely positioned to do this: our two-member team consists of two trained and experienced editors, and we are housed within the Office of General Counsel (OGC). Our senior editor, Miranda Christensen (who you may recall from an ACUPA online seminar she conducted) brings experience with Plain English from a previous position at an education company. Our attorneys, with their varied backgrounds and expertise, often participate not only in the legal review of drafts, but also as integral members of drafting committees.

Since the Policy Office became part of OGC two years ago, we have developed a partnership with OGC attorneys to craft policy language that balances legal accuracy with clarity for their intended audience. In this article, we’ll explain how the UVU Policy Office editors and OGC attorneys collaborate by sharing their editorial and legal expertise and by using MS Teams and AI tools.

The Quest for Accessible Language

Step 1

Our drafting committees are chaired by a policy steward tasked with drafting policy and leading the draft through our process. The Policy Office editor assigned to a policy provides ongoing editorial support and guides the policy steward throughout all phases. Once a drafting committee finalizes its draft, it submits it to the Policy Office for a comprehensive editorial review.

Step 2

In addition to typical editing tasks, the Policy Office editor conducts readability tests. The one we rely on the most is the Flesch-Kincaid test. These readability tests help us determine whether the draft is at a reading level that is appropriate for its intended audience. For example, for policies intended for students, we try to keep the reading level at Grade 10 to 14. For policies intended for faculty and graduate students, a higher reading level is appropriate. (We have not yet established a concrete Plain English rubric with formalized recommendations for reading levels and audiences—we hope to return later with another blog post about that.)

Step 3

If the editor determines that a lower reading level would be appropriate, they discuss this with the policy steward and the assigned attorney and begin their work. We have experimented with using AI (CoPilot or ChatGPT) as a tool to help us simplify complex passages. We may use prompts similar to this:

Simplify this paragraph into plainer English:

{Text inserted}


“Recast this text into reading level 12.”

{Text inserted}

Step 5

Once AI provides the revised paragraph, the editor reviews it to determine if it is sufficiently recast and if it fits the tone and context of the policy. Often, the editor makes further revisions. When the editor completes making the revision, they tag it with a comment. In this comment, the editor indicates they used AI to help simplify the text. They also use the comment to ask the assigned attorney to review the proposed revision. The prevailing concern for the editor is to ensure their revision didn’t lose any intended legal meaning.

Collaborating with our Attorneys

The assigned attorney conducts their legal review to ensure the policy content is legally sound and meets compliance requirements with Utah Board of Higher Education policy, state laws, and federal laws and regulations. The attorney is also tasked with ensuring the policy language itself communicates clearly any required legal meaning.

Because we use MS Teams to collaborate during the review process, the editor, the attorney, and the policy steward can chat or comment back and forth within the document. Once the attorney completes their review, the editor, attorney, and policy steward meet to review all revisions and resolve outstanding issues or questions.

This collaboration requires diplomacy and compromise. As the Policy Office editors, we do our best to advocate for clear, accessible language, while the attorneys focus on ensuring legal soundness to protect the institution and its community. There are situations where established legal language must prevail, and others where plain language is sufficient. The editors and attorneys, along with the policy stewards, can prioritize these needs through collaboration. The result of this collaboration is a policy that has benefited from those with editorial skills, subject matter expertise, and legal expertise.

One of our attorneys, Greg Jones, said this about his experience with the collaboration between editors, attorneys, and policy stewards:

“This was an ensemble project; team members respected each other’s proposed edits, even the ones that were ultimately rejected. We learned how to work with each other through the process of back-and-forth. Toward the end, a moment came when I thought everything was coming together, but I could see we had some legal problems with the draft. I saw a way to both fix those problems and significantly simplify the policy, but my solution would trample past edits of team members, and for all I knew it might break something. The team let me take a shot at it. The next day, we started our meeting, and to my surprise, they not only accepted my edits but liked them. This turned out to be a collaborative effort in which everyone enhanced the effectiveness of the others, focused on our objective, and we achieved success. In the end I did not feel like an attorney advising the drafting committee but simply felt like another member of the team.”

What our Attorneys Contribute

Policy Officer editors have discovered the following about what their attorney colleagues contribute to crafting policy language:

• They do indeed wish to use clear, Plain English as much as possible; they are willing to work with the editors and compromise on language. The exception is where specific language has been established in case law and is imbued with specific legal meaning.
• They are aware of the subtle legal meaning that certain words or phrases have—this is training most editors do not have. They work with us to determine whether we can use simpler phrasing if we have to use the legal term or language.
• They have excellent editorial instincts and provide suggestions on the logical order of ideas and consistent use of terms, and which terms are appropriate.
• They can see how language and legal meaning have a very subtle interplay and how even seemingly small revisions can have an impact on the legal meaning and standing of policy text.

Ongoing Benefits of this Collaboration

We have found it powerful and enlightening to see how beneficial this interaction between editors, attorneys, and policy owners can be. In the UVU Policy Office, we find ourselves amazed at how much we learn from our attorneys about the complex legal landscape of higher education. The Policy Office believes that this partnership results in well-crafted, effective policy.

A metaphor for how this relationship works came from a recent team event: UVU OGC held its annual goal-setting retreat at a lovely cabin in the mountains of Utah. Afterwards, we went on a hike by taking a ski lift to the top of the local ski resort. We then hiked down to a beautiful, well-known waterfall.

Although the hike was a descent, it was challenging for me. I had recently spent 6 weeks limping around with a cane due to a rogue knee. Having just started physical therapy and exercise to regain stability and function, I really wanted to go on this hike but had serious hesitations. The team encouraged me to go.

Within a few minutes of stepping off the ski lift, a teammate stayed behind with me to make sure I made the descent safely. His companionship and care motivated me to not turn back, but to keep going. The group ahead stopped often to make sure we could catch up. Team members took turns asking me how I was doing, whether I needed water or a break, and if I needed assistance crossing the stream at the base of the waterfall. Then our manager and another coworker left the group early to retrieve his SUV and drive up the mountain as far as he could to shorten the distance from the waterfall back to the resort. Three coworkers walked me to the point where our manager picked us up, while the rest of the group took the regular trail down.

Our team collaborated to make this hike enjoyable not only for me, but for all of us. Each person seemed to know instinctively what I, or any of us, needed in the moment. At one point, the team cheered on one of our teammates who has a fear of heights but took the lift up the mountain. Each teammate took turns taking care of each other. This is the core of any work we do in higher education—drawing upon the expertise of colleagues across many disciplines and collaborating to build not only solid policy, but institutions striving to fulfill their educational missions.