5 ms·

> In this study, the researchers asked about 200 non-lawyers (native speakers of English living in the United States, who were recruited through a crowdsourcing

> In this study, the researchers asked about 200 non-lawyers (native speakers of English living in the United States, who were recruited through a crowdsourcing site called Prolific), to write two types of texts. In the first task, people were told to write laws prohibiting crimes such as drunk driving, burglary, arson, and drug trafficking. In the second task, they were asked to write stories about those crimes. How does one draw the conclusion that the chosen prose is “magic incantations” from something like this. If I ask you to write a story about a chair, you’re going to have a much more comprehensible description of the individual chair envisioned compared to if I ask you to legally define what is and isn’t a chair. A story about something doesn’t need to capture edge cases or define hard boundaries on otherwise open ended terms

haswell 2y ago
This stood out to me as well. If you ask me to write a spec describing a piece of software, it’s going to come out very differently than a story about someone using that piece of software. A story is narrative. A contract is must be definitive and withstand scrutiny over time. A story takes you on a journey about a subject, and what you take away from that story is often subjective. A contract cannot be subjective or it’s likely unenforceable. I’m not saying legal documents can’t be made more understandable, but at the same time, it seems pretty obvious that a legal document is necessarily structured quite differently than a story for reasons that have nothing to do with magic. I do think there’s a certain formality that is more about stylistically separating legal documents from other kinds of writing, and it could be argued that this degree of formality isn’t necessary. But at the same time, it feels appropriate that the legal system and the language in it endures, even as society evolves rapidly around it. It seems like one of the only ways to maintain sanity in a legal system in a highly dynamic environment.
rcxdude 2y ago
Also, laymen are much more likely to simply cargo-cult a style without understanding the purpose or origin (e.g. if copy-and-edit is the root cause, you would still expect that people who are instructed to write laws from scratch would mimic that style. I am pretty confident that lawyers drafting contracts will maintain a style because of copying: if a wording has been 'proven' before then it's lower risk than trying to word it more clearly yourself). I don't think it makes for super solid evidence for the hypothesis (It doesn't contradict it, though).
yobbo 2y ago
One of these "convolutions" is called center-embedding. It's discussed on Lex Fridman's podcast: https://lexfridman.com/edward-gibson-transcript#chapter9_center_embedding https://lexfridman.com/edward-gibson-transcript#chapter9_cen... It's objectively less comprehensible, and there is no benefit to it other than sounding legalese.
- tpmoney 2y ago
  It can certainly be less comprehensible, but: 1) No benefit is not in evidence. The article links to another article describing a prior study and gives the following example of a "center-embedded" clause and a replacement [1]. The center-embedded version: "In the event that any payment or benefit by the Company (all such payments and benefits, including the payments and benefits under Section 3(a) hereof, being hereinafter referred to as the "Total Payments'), would be subject to excise tax, then the cash severance payments shall be reduced." Their improved version: "In the event that any payment or benefit by the Company would be subject to excise tax, then the cash severance payments shall be reduced. All payments and benefits by the Company shall hereinafter be referred to as the "Total Payments." This includes the payments and benefits under Section 3(a) hereof." The immediate problem that comes to me in reading the "improved" version is the ambiguity about the word "This" in the 3rd sentence. Is "This" referring to the "Total Payments", or is "This" referring to the payments that will be reduced? Both are interpretations one could read into the paragraph. If Section 3(a) describes non-cash benefits, the intent of the paragraph might be to note that those specific payments will also be reduced, even though they aren't cash payments. Regardless of the overall comprehensibility of the center-embedded version, it is crystal clear that the payments in Section 3(a) are included in the term "Total Payments". And while this might seem like needless nit-picking, it's worth remembering that court cases around things like the death penalty have hinged on whether "cruel and unusual punishment" requires that a punishment be both "cruel" and "unusual" before it violates the constitution. Words matter in law, and being very specific with your words to convey your intent also matters. 2) One can not conclude that the reason for including center-embedded definitions is because of "magic incantation" thinking from the proposed study. People often use parenthetical statements (even in spoken word), and they often do so when they're wanting to clarify or further define a possibly ambiguous turn of phrase. But parenthetical statements are less common in narrative prose. To ask people to write definitional text, and compare that to narrative text they've written and conclude that the parenthetical statements in the definitional text were chosen for "magic incantation reasons" instead of say, "because as I wrote that, I realized I should be clear what I was talking about" seems like a huge leap of logic unsupported by the established facts. It's common in recipes to tell someone to "do X until Y" (e.g. "fry until golden brown", and not "fry while not golden brown"), yet very few programming languages have such a control structure. "while" loops, "do...while" and "for" loops are all common, but "do...until" is something I can recall encountering once, and don't even recall the language. But from this we certainly can't conclude that people writing recipes think that "do...until" gives magic incantation powers and weight to their recipes. It just means in separate contexts, different language structures are more or less useful in different types of prose and given their surrounding context. [1]: https://phys.org/news/2022-03-ways-lawyers-written-documents-easier.html https://phys.org/news/2022-03-ways-lawyers-written-documents...

haswell 2y ago

This stood out to me as well. If you ask me to write a spec describing a piece of software, it’s going to come out very differently than a story about someone using that piece of software. A story is narrative. A contract is must be definitive and withstand scrutiny over time. A story takes you on a journey about a subject, and what you take away from that story is often subjective. A contract cannot be subjective or it’s likely unenforceable. I’m not saying legal documents can’t be made more understandable, but at the same time, it seems pretty obvious that a legal document is necessarily structured quite differently than a story for reasons that have nothing to do with magic. I do think there’s a certain formality that is more about stylistically separating legal documents from other kinds of writing, and it could be argued that this degree of formality isn’t necessary. But at the same time, it feels appropriate that the legal system and the language in it endures, even as society evolves rapidly around it. It seems like one of the only ways to maintain sanity in a legal system in a highly dynamic environment.

rcxdude 2y ago

Also, laymen are much more likely to simply cargo-cult a style without understanding the purpose or origin (e.g. if copy-and-edit is the root cause, you would still expect that people who are instructed to write laws from scratch would mimic that style. I am pretty confident that lawyers drafting contracts will maintain a style because of copying: if a wording has been 'proven' before then it's lower risk than trying to word it more clearly yourself). I don't think it makes for super solid evidence for the hypothesis (It doesn't contradict it, though).

yobbo 2y ago

One of these "convolutions" is called center-embedding. It's discussed on Lex Fridman's podcast: https://lexfridman.com/edward-gibson-transcript#chapter9_center_embedding https://lexfridman.com/edward-gibson-transcript#chapter9_cen... It's objectively less comprehensible, and there is no benefit to it other than sounding legalese.

tpmoney 2y ago
It can certainly be less comprehensible, but: 1) No benefit is not in evidence. The article links to another article describing a prior study and gives the following example of a "center-embedded" clause and a replacement [1]. The center-embedded version: "In the event that any payment or benefit by the Company (all such payments and benefits, including the payments and benefits under Section 3(a) hereof, being hereinafter referred to as the "Total Payments'), would be subject to excise tax, then the cash severance payments shall be reduced." Their improved version: "In the event that any payment or benefit by the Company would be subject to excise tax, then the cash severance payments shall be reduced. All payments and benefits by the Company shall hereinafter be referred to as the "Total Payments." This includes the payments and benefits under Section 3(a) hereof." The immediate problem that comes to me in reading the "improved" version is the ambiguity about the word "This" in the 3rd sentence. Is "This" referring to the "Total Payments", or is "This" referring to the payments that will be reduced? Both are interpretations one could read into the paragraph. If Section 3(a) describes non-cash benefits, the intent of the paragraph might be to note that those specific payments will also be reduced, even though they aren't cash payments. Regardless of the overall comprehensibility of the center-embedded version, it is crystal clear that the payments in Section 3(a) are included in the term "Total Payments". And while this might seem like needless nit-picking, it's worth remembering that court cases around things like the death penalty have hinged on whether "cruel and unusual punishment" requires that a punishment be both "cruel" and "unusual" before it violates the constitution. Words matter in law, and being very specific with your words to convey your intent also matters. 2) One can not conclude that the reason for including center-embedded definitions is because of "magic incantation" thinking from the proposed study. People often use parenthetical statements (even in spoken word), and they often do so when they're wanting to clarify or further define a possibly ambiguous turn of phrase. But parenthetical statements are less common in narrative prose. To ask people to write definitional text, and compare that to narrative text they've written and conclude that the parenthetical statements in the definitional text were chosen for "magic incantation reasons" instead of say, "because as I wrote that, I realized I should be clear what I was talking about" seems like a huge leap of logic unsupported by the established facts. It's common in recipes to tell someone to "do X until Y" (e.g. "fry until golden brown", and not "fry while not golden brown"), yet very few programming languages have such a control structure. "while" loops, "do...while" and "for" loops are all common, but "do...until" is something I can recall encountering once, and don't even recall the language. But from this we certainly can't conclude that people writing recipes think that "do...until" gives magic incantation powers and weight to their recipes. It just means in separate contexts, different language structures are more or less useful in different types of prose and given their surrounding context. [1]: https://phys.org/news/2022-03-ways-lawyers-written-documents-easier.html https://phys.org/news/2022-03-ways-lawyers-written-documents...