Top city law firm uses AI to remove, he, she, and chairman from documents

[Wrongsideofhistorymyarse]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9037321/Top-City-law-firm-purge-gendered-language-templates.html

Gendered pronouns will be replaced with 'they'.

Easier to fiddle with documents than actually address real issues around diversity

Yes law firms are pretty rife with this... all woke points so they can demonstrate to potential clients how inclusive they are. They have shiny new inclusion managers/directors/committees who seem to spend their time thinking up new ways to populate press releases. I have a seen many announcements about making all their offices accessible for people with disabilities, staff volunteering in hostels or childcare/flexiwork for parents. So nothing actually useful...

When the next fad comes in they will drop this and go running to the next...

When I worked in the city it was like asking for the world to stop turning of you asked for someone to be referred to as ‘Chair’ rather than ‘chairman’ if they were a woman. This new ‘thing’ has happened so fast.

Gah - ‘I have a seen many announcements...’ no, I haven’t seen any.... etc...

@Biscuitsanddoombar

Easier to fiddle with documents than actually address real issues around diversity

This gets to the heart of it. If we no longer record sex as a matter of course when gathering data we won't even be able to hold them to account for employing mostly white blokes who went to public school. But hey, if they're using the sanctioned pronouns then that's progress!

Surely they can't do that everywhere - in statements, or in signed contracts for example, you can't go retroactively mucking about with them?

So it's not just virtue signalling, it's pointless, incomplete virtue signalling.

You know at this point I'd get on board with a new neuter-singular pronoun - because using 'they' just makes life difficult. Didn't one of the Northern European countries do that? Sen?

Actually, this is a good thing. It's mostly aimed at removing default male language. It's been perfectly standard for years in other fields to make language neutral rather than male - including the also perfectly standard and long established use of 'they' for individuals of unknown sex. I work in a male dominated industry and I'm jolly glad that documents don't refer to 'he' or 'sirs'.

The only thing that's a shame here is that they didn't get on and remove default male forms of language years ago and that it seems to have taken concerns about 'identity' to get them into the 21st century.

Here's the times report on this, I've not read the DM version yet.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/clifford-chance-to-use-ai-in-purge-of-gendered-language-ltlpfjr6l?shareToken=74f12d896cf647c228d68a4a2f029d68

I haven't seen any* announcements about making all their offices accessible for people with disabilities, staff volunteering in hostels or childcare/flexiwork for parents. So nothing actually useful...*

Stonewall et al have made it so easy for organisations to gain credibility by displaying their rainbow credentials they don't have to do the actual work of creating a fair and equal environment for everyone. I remember when I first started in the workforce many moons ago crèches were a standard facility in the offices of the organisation I worked for. They closed soon after I joined and never reopened.

Of course PP are quite right that law firms need to work on genuine diversity, but surely no one thinks it's a bad thing that they stop addressing people as 'Dear Sirs'?

They chose not to do this 30 years ago onwards from when I started working in the city. It’s all just virtue signalling.

@HecatesCatsInXmasHats

I haven't seen any* announcements about making all their offices accessible for people with disabilities, staff volunteering in hostels or childcare/flexiwork for parents. So nothing actually useful...*

Stonewall et al have made it so easy for organisations to gain credibility by displaying their rainbow credentials they don't have to do the actual work of creating a fair and equal environment for everyone. I remember when I first started in the workforce many moons ago crèches were a standard facility in the offices of the organisation I worked for. They closed soon after I joined and never reopened.

This is what I’ve been squawking about for ages now - a kick of paint and a new door sign is a hell of a lot cheaper and more ‘pretty’ than handrails, ranps and Braille signs...

Yawn. I remember my employer doing this back in the 90s. It’s been standard for a long time to have gender neutral language in templates.

I would welcome this - it’s just removing the idea that the default is male. It’s not witness statements and so on, the article says it’s their templates.

So for example, instead of “if a shareholder cannot attend he may nominate a proxy” it’ll be “they may nominate a proxy”.

@PlanDeRaccordement

Yawn. I remember my employer doing this back in the 90s. It’s been standard for a long time to have gender neutral language in templates.

Yes... I should have said this gets them into 20th century norms, not the 21st upthread.

I take your point Errol, it still feels a bit rum and virtue signally that this has probably come about because of gender ideology. These organisations are so male dominated it doesn't signify that they're genuinely committed to women having a better deal.

Of course PP are quite right that law firms need to work on genuine diversity, but surely no one thinks it's a bad thing that they stop addressing people as 'Dear Sirs'?confused

No, I agree on that. I hold up my hands, I'd only read the headline, not the sub header that clarified it was just templates, not existing documents.

Still think a singular neuter pronoun would be good though - there's documents where it doesn't matter (instruction manuals), and documents where whether you're talking about a singular person or multiple people can matter, and can make it unclear/cumbersome to use singular they (to be fair, there's also plenty of times where it's not unclear and sounds fine)

S/he that’s all you need. That’s what I see on documents we get.

I’m more peeved/exasperated at the reason they have done this. Women have been querying/arguing for this for donkeys years - it was generally treated as a joke and not taken seriously at all. So why now - because it’s the fashion?

@ErrolTheDragon
Precisely. And the whole “uses AI” is just a fancy way of saying using the lowly “find and replace function” in MS Word, which has been around since the late 1980s. It’s like they’re implying in the article we didn’t have the AI to do this until now and so the templates just had to stay antiquated.

I used to work at this firm- it is not remotely diverse!
However I'm fine with what they propose to do. Lots of corporate and commercial precedent documents used he/him as the default. There was a trend for a whole of amending these to he/she and him/her and chairman/chairwoman but it made documents clunky and after a while I noticed that we had slipped back to the masculine by default. I don't know if it's trans/ non-binary inclusivity that has driven the latest changes (I mean- let's not really bother when it's JUST about appeasing the little wimmin). However I think they're good changes to make. Where gender neutral language can be used in context it should and this is not imo harmful to women.

S/he that’s all you need.

That may be preferable to 'they' if it's in a context where it's crucial to understand that it refers to exactly one individual, but in general it's more awkward to read (what to screen readers do? Hopefully say 'she or he'). Singular 'they' for unknown individuals has been in use since Shakespeare, it really isn't a strange and unnatural neologism. The same objections re singular/plural confusion apply to 'you' but we generally seem to cope with that.

You write appropriate to the context - so that it’s obvious if you mean one or more people. I used to write blurb and some technical stuff for professional services companies and you need to be precise.

I’m not a fan of s/he - they works well in most contexts. Is the objection that you think Clifford Chance is pandering to non binary people? I really don’t think that’s the case. They’re just dragging themselves into where they should have been about 30 years ago.

[quote PlanDeRaccordement]@ErrolTheDragon
Precisely. And the whole “uses AI” is just a fancy way of saying using the lowly “find and replace function” in MS Word, which has been around since the late 1980s. It’s like they’re implying in the article we didn’t have the AI to do this until now and so the templates just had to stay antiquated.[/quote]
Using a simple 'find and replace' can lead to howlers, they may genuinely need something a bit more sophisticated. But I hope they have human proof readers checking all the changes.

I’d worry about potential lack of clarity in the drafting, as well.

As an aside, I was told about a law firm (quite large, national) people equality/diversity survey recently which asked a wide range of questions including ethnicity, sexuality, religion, education, gender identity. But not the sex of the respondent.

They are pandering. They cold have some this 30 years ago but that job just didn’t exist then did it?

I have no problem with removing stuff like "Dear Sirs" where the change makes no difference. However when I was in private practice I remember writing a piece of advice which turned on whether the use of the word "they" in a contract referred to the obligation of one particular party, or multiple parties. The use of a plural pronoun solely to avoid gendered language isn't just a simple find and replace, it can change the meaning of a clause.

As far as I remember it was along the lines of "The Parties agree that Person A will do xyz, and they agree to do pay ££ to third party C." Person A claimed that the use of a plural pronoun meant it was obviously referring to all the parties and they all had to bear the cost of the payment equally. Whereas one of the other parties claimed that "they" referred to Person A who needed to pay the amount in full on their own, and the reason it was a plural was because Person A was female and "they" was used instead of "he" to maintain gender neutral language.

We charged quite a bit for that advice and patted ourselves on the back that it wasn't our drafting!!!