Invitation to the Criminal Law Talk (Karistusõiguse Jutla): "Towards Clearer Legal Language: Swedish Experience" on April 11th

Criminal Law Talks (Karistusõiguse Jutla) is a series of webinars organized by the Department of Criminal Law at the University of Tartu.

The seminars are held regularly, approximately once a month on weekdays, and last about two hours. Depending on the topic, the speakers are either faculty members from the University of Tartu or guest speakers from outside. The audience includes faculty and students of the University of Tartu, practicing lawyers, and other interested parties depending on the topic. The talks are usually held on the same Zoom link.

The talks are conducted live, meaning they are not recorded, and slides are not shared. One of the goals of the talks is to foster an open and informal academic discussion. It is not a training session but a talk.

We invite you to join the next Criminal Law Talk (Karistusõiguse Jutla):

April 11th, 2025, from 11:00 to 12:00 on the topic "Towards Clearer Legal Language: Swedish Experience". The guest speaker will be Linus Roos.

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It is a well-known and somewhat humorous criticism of lawyers that they draft complex texts to secure work for themselves. Lawyers, on the other hand, justify the increasing complexity of legal language by pointing to the intricacies of different fields and the influx of EU regulations. But does it really have to be this way?

In this talk, we will explore the experience of a country that has decided to take a different direction. Linus will tell us about the Klarspråk (Plain Language) project, which started in Sweden about twenty years ago. He will provide an overview of the reasons behind launching the project, the counterarguments it faced, the effect it has had to other Nordic countries, and where Sweden stands today.

About Linus Roos
Linus Roos holds a PhD in Legal Science and a Bachelor's degree in Rhetoric. He works as a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Behavioural, Social and Legal Sciences at Örebro University, Sweden. Both his research and teaching are interdisciplinary, focusing on various aspects of legal argumentation. He has over ten years of experience teaching law students practical skills relevant to the profession, such as negotiation and mediation techniques, interrogation methods, and litigation. In recent years he has increasingly focused on legal plain language, i.e., the ability to communicate legal content in a simple and comprehensible manner, with non-lawyers as the primary target audience in mind.

The lecture is intended for everyone—whether lawyers or non-lawyers—who have ever wondered whether more simple legal language is possible, as well as for those who are convinced that it is not.

Join the Talk on Zoom