The lawyer called their clients.
Grammarly gives the following sentence a score of 100 of 100:
"The lawyer called their clients."
How is this a correct sentence?
See example:
The lawyer called his clients.
Geordan Logan
New member
2 answers 
The thing about pronouns is to make sure that it is clear who or what we are talking about. Without context, the sentence certainly does seem to need his to be correct, not their. But what about these examples?
Mr. Brown and his son ran a company together. When they decided to file for bankruptcy, they hired a lawyer. The lawyer called their clients to provide information.
ABC company hired a lawyer. The lawyer called its clients.
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answered Aug 20 '12 at 22:06
Patty T
Grammarly Fellow
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I'm still fuzzy on this one, Lewis, when it is clear who we are talking about because of context. How about the lawyer called on their behalf?
Whew. I guess it wasn't actually as clear as I thought, who the pronoun was referring to. A good example of why you need to make sure the pronoun is clearly pointing in the right direction..
add commentIts not.
Although I just play here, I feel it it necessary to remind people that Grammarly is just software, and English is an extremely complex language with a huge vocabulary. This complexity means no software today is able to catch 100% of errors. In my own experience, I'd say Grammarly catches about 80% of your errors and still has a fairly high percentage of "false positives."
Your sentence is fairly straightforward, and I'm surprised Grammarly did not catch the problem. You should contact Grammarly Support (they do not read this forum) at the link on the bottom of this page.
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edited Aug 20 '12 at 20:08
Jeff Pribyl
Grammarly Fellow
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