Maritime Law Editing and Proofreading Services

Maritime documents cross borders, languages, and legal systems, often within a single voyage. A charterparty may be agreed between a Greek owner and a Singaporean charterer, performed by a Filipino crew, and litigated in London. English is the working language for most of it — frequently a second language for the people relying on it. Ambiguity does not stay local here; it travels.

We edit charterparties and fixture recaps, bills of lading and sea waybills, letters of indemnity, notices of readiness and laytime statements, protest and incident reports, salvage and towage agreements, marine insurance documents, survey reports, and casualty correspondence. Our editors watch particularly for incorporation clauses — a bill of lading that incorporates "the charterparty" without identifying which one, or which of its terms, is one of the oldest recurring problems in the field.

Recap telexes and fixture notes deserve attention despite their brevity. They are drafted quickly in shorthand, and they bind. An abbreviation that is obvious to a broker may not be obvious to a tribunal three years later.

All commercial and casualty material is treated as confidential. We keep the trade terminology intact and make certain the sentences around it can only be read one way.