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Plain English Jury Instructions
The California Judicial Council's website includes discussion of plain English jury instructions that were approved in July 2003.

The website include a "Civil Jury Instructions Resource Center" that compares some BAJI instructions with the Plain English version. For example,

BAJI 2.21 reads: Failure of recollection is common. Innocent misrecollection is not uncommon.
The latter sentence is stated in triple negatives. The comparable Judicial Council instruction (number 107) reads: People often forget things or make mistakes in what they remember.
This is an example of the use of basic English language principles to make instructions simpler.

Or here is discussion of that tricky concept of preponderance of the evidence:

BAJI 2.60 reads: "Preponderance of the evidence" means evidence that has more convincing force than that opposed to it. If the evidence is so evenly balanced that you are unable to say that the evidence on either side of an issue preponderates, your finding on that issue must be against the party who had the burden of proving it.
These are familiar words to lawyers. But the task force had to ask whether the average juror ever used the noun "preponderance"� and, more pointedly, the verb "preponderates."� The comparable Judicial Council instruction (number 200) reads: When I tell you that a party must prove something, I mean that the party must persuade you, by the evidence presented in court, that what he or she is trying to prove is more likely to be true than not true. This is sometimes referred to as "the burden of proof."

The instructions are available at the Judicial Council website, subject to the stated licensing restrictions, and should be helpful to all lawyers who want their juries to be instructed in "plain English."