Maria Mindlin is an expert in Readability, Plain Language, and Translation. Her company, Transcend, provides readability, field-testing, and certified translation services to courts and legal service agencies across the U.S. Her proudest accomplishments include:
- Created the first plain language court forms in the country with the California Judicial Council in 2001.
- Conducted a Comparative Readability Study of Plain Language Court Forms, published in Scribes Journal of Legal Writing, 2005. To date, this is the only quantitative test of plain language court forms in the U.S.
- Readability instructor, UC Davis Law School, under the direction of Richard Wydick (author of Plain English for Lawyers).
- Works with Pro Bono Net on Plain Language and translation projects to increase user access to legal materials.
- Drafted over 1,000 plain language legal documents for state courts and legal aid agencies across the country.