Western Michigan University Cooley Law School's Kimble Center for Legal Drafting has received a 2023 ClearMark Award in the Legal Documents category. The award recognized the Kimble Center's "A Durable Power of Attorney for My Finances" form. The win was announced during the Center for Plain Language's June 22 ClearMark Awards ceremony. The ClearMark Awards recognize the best in plain-language communications from government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private companies in North America.
This is the Kimble Center's second ClearMark Award in the Legal Documents category, the first coming in 2021 for the center's Medical Power of Attorney. The Kimble Center's mission is to produce and make available-to attorneys and consumers-legal documents that are clear and easily understandable, documents unlike anything that the public is used to seeing from attorneys.
New Zealand-based Gusto Design worked with the Kimble Center on both forms.
Both forms also earned the WriteMark Plus designation for plain language from Write Limited, a New Zealand consulting organization. Both are screen readable and can be filled in online. They are available to the public for free on the Center's website: www.cooley.edu/academics/kimble-center-writing.
WMU-Cooley Law School created the Kimble Center in 2018. Joseph Kimble is a distinguished professor emeritus.
