I've always thought of lawyers like software developers in this case. If you give either of them carte blanche, they will tend to create overly complex and exp

I've always thought of lawyers like software developers in this case. If you give either of them carte blanche, they will tend to create overly complex and expensive systems. It's not even malicious or self-serving (at least I'd like to think it's not), but more that their jobs revolve around "edge cases", and without something to reel them back they will try their hardest to cover them all. I wonder if the software development adage of "good software is defined by what it does, great software is defined by what it doesn't do" applies to law?