Assessing L2 legal writing through a plain English lens: Insights on complexity, accuracy, and fluency
Abstract
Legal English writing pedagogy in the United States has been largely shaped by the plain English movement, which prioritizes clarity and concision. At the same time, second language (L2) writing research emphasizes complexity as a hallmark of development, which creates a potential tension for L2 legal writing instruction. Using mixed-effects modeling, we examined how complexity, accuracy, and fluency measures intersect with instructors' evaluations of L2 legal essays within a classroom setting. We analyzed 14 CAF measures in relation to two legal language instructors' ratings of 123 hypothetical legal essays produced by 31 L2 English student writers enrolled in the Master of Laws program. Think-aloud and focus group interview data were elicited to probe instructors’ assessment processes and perceptions. With rater differences statistically controlled, results show that grammatical accuracy emerges as a strong predictor across all assessed areas, whereas fluency significantly predicts content scores alone. By comparison, syntactic complexity exerts only a minor, content-specific influence, with significant effects limited to clauses per sentence and coordinate phrases per clause. Insights from the think-aloud sessions and focus group interviews further underscore the critical role of grammatical accuracy in legal writing evaluations, understood not as a rejection of sophistication but as a way of balancing accessibility with the precise linguistic choices that signal legal competence. This study offers empirically grounded implications for instruction, suggesting that greater pedagogical emphasis on grammatical accuracy, clarity, and precision aligns more closely with instructor assessment practices within a plain English legal discourse than an early focus on syntactic complexity.
Publication Title
System
Recommended Citation
Xu, Y., Zhang, X., & Casal, J. (2026). Assessing L2 legal writing through a plain English lens: Insights on complexity, accuracy, and fluency. System, 141 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2026.104076
