Christopher Williams analyzes the use of constructions such as modals and semi-modals such as shall and may and the use of the present simple as these constructions appear in English prescriptive legal texts. Using a large corpus of texts from a variety of English-speaking countries and international organizations, Williams focuses primarily on legislative texts, which are often characterized as including archaic or rarely used words and foreign words, the repetition of particular words and phrases, the use of long, complex sentences, and the passive voice (p. 31). Williams's analysis, thoughtfully designed and carried out, is an informative examination of how and why legal language has resisted change. The book also provides an engaging look at the Plain Language Movement and the impact this movement has had on legal texts.

This is perhaps the first study of legal language that considers all verbal constructions, as opposed to focusing on a particular construction such as the modal auxiliary shall. As Williams notes in his introduction, legal language received relatively little systematic study by linguistics until the 1970s (15). Williams attributes the interest of linguists in legal language at this time in part to the publication of Mellinkoff's The language of the law and Crystal & Davy's Investigating English style, and to the emergence of discourse analysis as a new area of linguistics. In the past two decades, Williams documents that there have been numerous studies of law and language, conducted by both legal scholars and linguists. This growing interest in legal language was prompted by the Plain Language Movement, which originated in the 1970s and calls for simplification of legal language in order to make legal documents more comprehensible to the public. Proponents of the Plain Language Movement have completed many of these studies of legal language. Applied linguists have also addressed issues of how to teach legal English to non-native speakers, including “the need of finding ways of making it more accessible while adhering to sound pedagogical principles” (17).

Williams's work is an important contribution to both legal scholarship and linguistics. It uses discourse analysis to examine systematically legal language that has incorporated the principles of the Plain Language Movement as well as texts that follow a more traditional style and do not incorporate these principles. Williams provides both the legal community and the linguistic community with valuable insight into when the use of Plain Language has been or could be justified. His corpus includes laws, regulations, codes, contracts, treaties, conventions, and other regulatory instruments that constitute normative texts. He collected 36 texts, a total of 145,073 words and 7168 finite verbal constructions, from the United Kingdom, the European Union, the United States, international organizations such as the United Nations and the International Labour Organization, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Ireland, and New Zealand. By focusing on verbal constructions in prescriptive legal texts, Williams intends to address “the role of law and the role of language within the field of law” (18). “What if” asks Williams, “the Parliaments of all the major English-speaking countries decided to adopt the suggestions of the Plain Language Movement, as is already starting to happen on a limited (generally federal) scale in certain parts of the English-speaking world, e.g. in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa? What would be the consequences not just in linguistic terms but in terms of the relationship between citizens, legal experts and the law?” (18).

Williams cannot, of course, definitively answer these questions, but his study does much to explore the issues they suggest, and it is a readable, informative text. Williams provides concrete evidence as to why many of the verbal constructions used in law that might at first glance appear to be archaic or confusing are in many cases still necessary. Based on the insights from his data, he offers balanced conclusions such as this: “Legal language would undoubtedly benefit from the application of more rigorous and scientific criteria as regards the actual drafting of texts. But an overly dogmatic approach such as the absolute prohibition of using shall, should be avoided” (195).