Legal word of the week-[Review And Revise]- Series by Alan M L Jones.

REVIEW and REVISE

"rehearse a contract" is wrong, you'd never say it. See below for explanation

Talking of a new financial services "product"

The most efficient way of proceeding is for you to tell the regulatory law specialists about the new product you're thinking of introducing so they can review (v) it from the regulatory perspective. You may need to revise the product in light of the results of their review (n)

1 Review and revise are significantly different

Although they share the same Latin root and five out of six of their letters are the same, these two words are significantly different

See Longman or other good dictionary but in short you start by reviewing something. You read it and work out whether it's OK

If it isn't, you may decide to revise (i.e. change / amend) it or you may even rewrite it

In general,

a review > comments

a revision > a new version / draft

2 Look at these examples

To review an agreement and send comments to the client / to the other side

To revise an agreement and send the final drafts out / to the client

To review our position / plans / forecast / prediction when new information comes to light - to look at it again / to reconsider it

To revise our position plans / forecast / prediction - to change our position / what we think, quite possibly after having reviewed it

A revised - not reviewed - draft

3 Rehearse or revise?

You revise for exams - you look at your notes and try to remember them

What if you are acting in a play or have to make an important presentation or speech?

Generally you will rehearse for these which means that you will practise what you are going to do when it's for real

The final practice session before the first night of a play is the dress rehearsal because you wear the clothes you are going to wear on the first night

If you revise a speech, you change it

If you rehearse a speech, you stand up and deliver it to an empty room. If you think part of it isn't very good, you may revise it

About Alan M L Jones

Qualified as a solicitor more than 35 years ago and has practised for many years mostly in London but also further afield in Amsterdam, Luxembourg and Tokyo. Alan has been both a lawyer and a communication / language teacher for years and used his experience to create the ACE Legal English online courses for non-native speaker lawyers. The courses are very engaging and relevant and are the first of their kind.