machon editing

About machon editing

editorial excellence
for legal practitioners

and legal scholars.

machon editing positions itself as an active partner in the legal drafting process in English. Our editing services add value and provide comfort by our safeguarding textual accuracy, improving drafting and textual cohesiveness, and ensuring consistency. Our focus is to hone our clients’ competitive edge on an international playing field. We are fluent in US, UK, EU, and international legal English writing styles and terms of art.

Our edits, comments, and suggestions are always returned to you in track changes in Word. You receive this mark-up version along with a “clean” version so that you can readily track any changes made, and easily make a compare version. Even with short, high-pressure deadlines. In other words, you remain in control of document management and determine your document’s final form.

Our work is always strictly confidential. We are happy to sign or provide a non-disclosure or confidentiality statement and adhere to the requirements of being on an insiders list, when needed.

About our expertise

Recent work includes assignments from lawyers and legal scholars from the following law firms and institutions

De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, Amsterdam
Birkway, Amsterdam
Glatzova & Co., Prague
Pels Rijcken, The Hague
Stibbe, Amsterdam
Van Doorne, Amsterdam

University of Maastricht, School of Law
University of Amsterdam, School of Law
Vrije Universiteit, School of Law

Netherlands Commercial Court

Our services

machon editing has extensive experience in carefully and accurately editing and reviewing documents drafted by legal practitioners and legal scholars. This encompasses a spectrum of texts and related styles ranging from client advisory work and transaction-related documents and contracts, to litigation and arbitration work, Commission and CJEU submissions, and scholarly articles/books and PhD theses. And we are fully conversant with linguistic and formal differences between these documents, not to mention essential elements of good contract drafting and how to apply them. We are fluent in US, UK, EU, and international legal English writing styles and terms of art.

Editing and reviewing

We carefully edit and review documents to ensure that the text, whether drafted directly in English or prepared as a translation, is readily comprehensible and consistent with contemporary legal writing style. This includes post-editing DeepL, ChatGBT or related machine translations. We also edit and review scholarly articles and proofread PhD theses on aspects of the law being prepared for publication. We would also be happy to brainstorm and work with you on preparing effective contemporary website texts and client communications.

You as author always have final editorial control

Our edits, comments, and suggestions are always returned to you in track changes in Word. You receive this mark-up version along with a “clean” version so that you can readily track any changes made, and also easily make a compare version. Even with short, high-pressure deadlines. In other words, you remain in control of document management and determine your document’s final form.

Legal editing

What does a legal editor/reviewer do?
A legal editor reviews a document critically from both a language and a legal point of view. A legal editor focuses not only on spelling, grammar, and a house style, but equally on proper usage, punctuation, structure, efficacy of argumentation, legal terminology and terms of art, consistency, accuracy, and drafting style. And makes appropriate concrete suggestions on how to improve all of these. A legal editor can also help to reduce word count, and ensure references and citations are accurate and consistent. This also means a legal editor is able to sustain focus and attention to detail when reviewing lengthy complex texts. In short, a legal editor is an active partner in the drafting process.

What does a legal proofreader do?
A legal proofreader corrects spelling, syntax and grammar, and aligns a written document of a legal nature with a specific house style. A legal proofreader also checks for consistency, use of legal terms, legal usage, and accuracy of citations, but does not analyse an author’s argumentation. In other words, a legal proofreader does not make substantive changes, except for signalling manifest errors in the text.

machon editing is committed to providing added value, accuracy and quality as an active partner in the legal drafting process. We guarantee timely delivery, at market-friendly fees, and strict confidentiality.

Stephen Machon

Stephen is a highly experienced legal English editor/reviewer and proofreader.

Before founding machon editing, Stephen was with De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek for more than 12 years as senior English editor and editorial services coordinator, where he regularly edited and reviewed client communications, advisory work, contracts, notarial deeds, and court and Commission submissions, to name just a part of his work. Stephen also regularly gave in-house bespoke workshops on good legal communication.

Recent work/publications: NCC Code of Civil Procedure and Glossary.

LinkedIn profile

Our fees

machon editing charges a standard hourly fee for its services. Our fees are market friendly, for either editing or proofreading. Delivery is generally 24-48 hours after receipt of your document. Shorter delivery times can be arranged, after consultation. Extremely short delivery times may incur an upcharge.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss a fee quote.

All our assignments are subject to our general conditions.

Contact us

Postal address
machon editing
Heuvelenweg 25
7991 CL Dwingeloo