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

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.