We rewrite documents:

• of all types - from customers service letters, through to manuals and prospectuses to legislative documents; and

• for all sorts of organisations - from law firms through to financial services organisations to government bodies.

Sometimes our work involves a "light edit". Sometimes it is a complete "rethink, reorganization, and rework" of the original document. 

We pride ourselves on striving:

• to preserve the meaning of the original document in the rewrite; and

• to make sure that the rewrite is "accurate, certain, and precise".

We prepare drafts for your people to review and we work with them until they are happy with the document. We recognise that it is your document and that your people —who are the subject matter experts—have final say.

Rewrite highlights

Highlights of our document rewriting work include:

• working on the team that produced the Australian Stock Exchange's plain-language Listing Rules

• working with Phil Knight (Canada) and Professor Joseph Kimble (USA) to produce a demonstration rewrite of South Africa's Human Rights Commission Bill for South Africa's Minister of Justice

• working on the team that created AMP's Proposal to Demutualise: Explanatory Memorandum and listing prospectus. The AMP Board sent the Explanatory Memorandum to the nearly two million members of the AMP Society to help them decide how to vote on whether AMP should demutualise. The Explanatory Memorandum is widely regarded as the international benchmark document of its type. Ken Morris, (the then President of Siegel & Gale, the New York-based international design and document simplification specialists) said of the document:

I thought the document was one of the finest pieces of simplification that I've seen.  ...  Hopefully it will prove an inspiration for companies here.  (Letter to Christopher Balmford 27 October 1997.)

Insurance documents

We have rewritten documents for several insurers, including:

• insurance policies
• brochures
• standard letters
• annual statements
• welcome packs sent to new customers
• forms and
• internal product updates.

A Canadian report said of some of the policies:

... The Australian Mutual Provident Society (AMP) has become an industry leader in research, development and testing of insurance documents for consumers.  In language, organization and design, the policies are outstanding models of good communication practice.  (Consumers' Association of Canada, Saskatchewan Plain Language Insurance Policies, Final Report, April 1997, prepared by Gale Barnes Consulting, page 50.)

Other documents

Our team has written many other documents including:

• agency agreements
• confidentiality agreements
• employment contracts
• bank guarantees
• finance leases
• trust deeds
• company constitutions
• prospectuses for initial public offerings and for the issue of various types of securities
• share buy-back proposals and related offer documents
• notices of extraordinary general meeting and
• annual reports for listed public companies and reports for market analysts.