Grice’s Maxims and the Psychology of Legal Communication
- Marc Roche
- Dec 8, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 10, 2025
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about legal communication: people don’t read your words. They read your intent.
Understanding the psychology of legal communication allows lawyers and paralegals to predict how their messages will be interpreted — not just on the surface, but in terms of intent, tone, and implied meaning.
Contents:
The Communication Framework Every Lawyer, Paralegal, and Executive Should Know
When you write or speak, people unconsciously apply Grice’s Maxims — the four rules that govern how humans expect communication to work. Break one, even by accident, and your reader will start looking for hidden meaning.
Picture this... you write what feels like a perfectly ordinary sentence. The recipient reads urgency, hesitation, criticism, or in some cases, the impending collapse of civilization.
The reason is simple: most people interpret messages using a framework of assumptions known as Grice’s Maxims—four unwritten rules that govern how we expect others to communicate. When those rules are broken, intentionally or not, the reader immediately begins searching for hidden meaning.
This dynamic is magnified by a well-documented cognitive process: human beings interpret incomplete information quickly and intuitively, relying on mental shortcuts rather than deliberate analysis.
As Daniel Kahneman explains, our “System 1” thinking is designed to infer meaning rapidly—even when the data is ambiguous.¹ This helps explain why professionals so often “read between the lines” and, occasionally, read far more than was ever written.
In business and law, this dynamic is significant. Misunderstandings, implied meanings, and tone failures regularly arise because one party accidentally violates a maxim.
Before examining how these rules shape everyday communication, consider a quick diagnostic test.
Imagine you ask a colleague, “Did you finish the report?” They respond, “I’ve been really busy today.”
What does that mean?
Most people instinctively choose:
A. They finished it.
B. They didn’t finish it.
C. They’re avoiding the question.
Whichever option feels correct to you reveals how naturally your brain interprets implied meaning. When someone avoids a direct answer, you assume the answer is hidden behind the curtain. That instinct sits at the heart of Grice’s framework.
The Four Maxims: The Invisible Code Everyone Thinks They’re Following
Grice identified four expectations embedded in every professional exchange:
Quantity: Provide the right amount of information.
Quality: Say only what you have evidence for.
Relation: Stay relevant to the point at hand.
Manner: Be clear, orderly, and unambiguous.
These maxims operate quietly in the background until one is breached. When that happens, the reader starts interpreting subtext—sometimes accurately, sometimes with the creativity of a novelist on a deadline.
A simple example illustrates the mechanism:
You ask, “When will the client receive the contract?”
Your colleague answers, “The contract is quite long.”
Quantity is the clearest violation; the reply offers none of the information actually requested.
Relation might also be considered breached—the length has nothing to do with timing.
Manner is questionable because the answer is vague.
Quality is probably safe, assuming the document does indeed exist somewhere north of 20 pages.
The important point is that the reply “feels wrong,” and your instinctive discomfort is your mind compensating for a maxim violation.
What Each Maxim Actually Means
1. Quantity — Enough, but Not Too Much
Professionally, people expect direct answers.Too little information suggests concealment. Too much suggests insecurity or obfuscation.
Example:
Bad: “Regarding the delivery situation, we note that several factors have influenced expected timelines…
”Good: “Delivery will arrive Friday. The delay was caused by customs.”
2. Quality — Truth and Evidence
This maxim warns against overstating facts or implying certainty where none exists.
Example:
Bad: “I’m sure the invoice was sent.”
Good: “To my knowledge, the invoice was sent yesterday. I will confirm and update you by 3 PM.”
3. Relation — Stay Relevant
Irrelevant information often signals avoidance.
Example:
Question: “Did your client sign the document?”
Answer: “My client was under significant stress that week.”
4. Manner — Clarity and Order
Ambiguity invites misinterpretation.
Example:
Vague: “We may need to reconsider the arrangement.”
Clear: “We need to renegotiate the delivery schedule.”
A Practical Test: The Hidden Meaning Behind Everyday Messages
Consider this message:
“I’ll get to your request once I finish a few important tasks.”
The maxim violated is Manner—the statement lacks specificity and invites interpretation. It brushes up against Quantity and Relation as well, amplifying ambiguity.
This dynamic explains why professionals often infer motives and priorities from a message that was never intended to communicate either.
Using Grice's Maxims Strategically: The Psychology of Legal Communication
Understanding these principles allows you to adjust your communication with precision.
To Project Authority
Follow Quantity and Manner rigorously.
To Avoid Commitment—Politely
Break Quantity or Manner softly.
“Shortly” remains one of the most flexible timelines in corporate history (and almost always means whatever the speaker wants it to mean).
To Defuse Conflict
Use Relation and Quality.
To Diagnose Meaning
Look for the maxim someone violates:
Quantity → concealment
Quality → uncertainty
Relation → avoidance
Manner → discomfort
Side Note: If this topic sparks something for you, our next article digs deeper into pragmatics in legal writing and speaking—especially how tiny shifts in wording can completely change how judges, clients, and opposing counsel interpret your intent.
Conversational Implicature: Where Meaning Really Comes From
When a maxim is breached, the listener automatically fills in the missing meaning.This process—conversational implicature—is a fundamental cognitive shortcut.
“Will the contract be ready today?”
“I’m tied up with other matters.”
The implicatures speak for themselves.
In high-stakes environments, the implications can become more influential than the words themselves.
Relevance Theory, developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, demonstrates that human communication depends heavily on the listener’s cognitive expectation of relevance.²
When a message is vague, sparse, or tangential, the recipient instinctively constructs meaning to satisfy that expectation.
Preventing Unintended Implicatures
Precision Protects Quality
“To the best of our knowledge…”
Direct Answers Protect Quantity
“We will review the file by 4 PM tomorrow…”
Relevance Protects Trust
“Payment was made on March 12. Documentation attached.”
(Empathy is sometimes optional; clarity is mandatory.)
Structure Protects Manner
Main answer → context → action step.
Breaking Maxims Intentionally: The Language of Power
Breaking Quantity
“Noted.”
“Proceed.”
Breaking Manner
“We’ll revisit this once priorities shift.”
Breaking Relation
“We need to stay focused on our main goals.”
Breaking Quality
“That timeline may be challenging.”
Each communicates a strategic message without stating it explicitly.
Operationalizing the Maxims
To sound authoritative:
“Here is the plan.”
“I’ll revise sections three to five by 3 PM.”
“You’ll receive the draft by 4 PM.”
“We can finalize tomorrow.”
To avoid liability:
“Based on the documents available, our preliminary assessment is as follows.”
To refocus a conversation:
“To stay focused on the key issue, here is what we need to resolve first.”
To decline politely:
“That may not be feasible within the current constraints.”
To signal executive control:
“Understood.”
“Agreed.”
“Proceed.”
“Not a priority.”
Footnotes
Explains fast, intuitive cognitive processing that underlies implicature and rapid meaning inference.
² Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Blackwell Publishing, 1986.
Explains how expectations of relevance drive human interpretation of ambiguous messages.
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