8 ms·

That's not true at all. Law is written like it is because courts give a lot of importance to what is written and changes in these written forms have many possib

That's not true at all. Law is written like it is because courts give a lot of importance to what is written and changes in these written forms have many possible consequences. This, combined with the fact that our judicial principles go very far back (starting already in ancient times with the Romans), makes it very inconvenient to change language and terms used.

jimmydddd 2y ago
This is correct. If 50 cases interpret and define the word "includes" in a contract, and you decide to use the word "comprises," you may end up burning time and money in court and negotiations.
- unethical_ban 2y ago
  Do engineering specifications use the same center embedded sentences as legal documents? IETF defines may, must, shall, etc. in every document but doesn't use the same format as law.
  - rbanffy 2y ago
    Law and technical standards are two places where language must be extremely precise to avoid misinterpretation. And destroying Mars probes because of mismatched units.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
      I have two different but reinforcing memories that support this. 1) I remember being in a Requirements Review meeting and spending an entire hour debating the meaning of a word. Don't remember the word, but it was something like "includes". 2) I separately remember being in a Requirements review for a feature that concluded successfully. Then later in a Design Review for that feature. And after that, Code and Unit Test reviews of the same feature. Then, months later, the feature was presented to the person who asked for it in the first place and then said, "that's not what I wanted. I wanted xxx instead." Yes, this person was at the Requirements and Design reviews!
      - rbanffy 2y ago
        Oh… also detectives. My colleagues say I don’t interview users. They say I interrogate them.
    - unethical_ban 2y ago
      Agreed. My point is that engineering documents read differently than legal documents, but have the same necessity for precision.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- rbanffy 2y ago
  This would be a good case for restricted versions of our commonly used languages with as few words and constructs as possible on a simple and consistent grammar. Much like a programming language for defining law.
  - delfinom 2y ago
    But then a contract would never be able to describe modern day inventions, processes or procedures as deliverables lol
    - kevindamm 2y ago
      You could, if you treated the object deliverable as a variable, with variables defined meta-circularly via a pre-representation. To do it, lawyers would have to learn some category theory, but I think many of them would enjoy it.
      - rbanffy 2y ago
        > but I think many of them would enjoy it. Many probably discovered it already, without realizing it has a name.
  - webspinner 2y ago
    There was a book written about something like that in 1949. Well OK OK I'm half joking, since the book wasn't entirely about that!
  - seritools 2y ago
    https://catala-lang.org/ https://catala-lang.org/
- vivekd 2y ago
  In law such words are called terms of art - but most lawyers know them and there's no reason for their use to create incomprehensible documents. It's not like every other word is a term of art. When I was I law school they taught us to write as clearly as possible and avoid legalese. Hopefully that catches on, I don't think legalese is good or necessary. Clarity is better
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    Really the main problem is trust and credibility, or lack thereof. Which necissitates all of these adaptations. There’s a famous story of Warren Buffet buying Nebraska Furnitur Mart with no paperwork whatsoever, just some verbal assurances, a handshake, and a TV interview with the esteemed owner.
  - Breza 2y ago
    Well said. I spent years working with an attorney who was first an English major. He wrote the best contracts because his initial focus was making things readable and obvious. The legal formalities came second. I firmly believe that plain language will avoid legal disputes better than PUTTING A BUNCH OF LATIN IN ALL CAPS AD OSTENTATIONEM.
psychlops 2y ago
Despite your opening sentence, you didn't disagree with OP. "Courts" are a venue for other lawyers.
- sdwr 2y ago
  There's a constant tendency here to assume other people don't think, they blindly copy what's popular. Everybody learns partially through pattern recognition, partially from trial and error, partially from armchair reasoning. And functions mostly by repeating what they already know. But it's emotionally satisfying to put all the negative parts onto others (cargo cult sheeple reciting magic spells), and save all the positive identifiers for yourself (brave scientist uncovering truths about the universe)
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    Okay, but I don't see that happening here? Like, nobody is comparing my code to legalese. And if they did, I'd apologize profusely if normal people had to interact with my source code on a regular basis! I wouldn't try to defend writing it the same way I write it when a single digit number of people have to read it ever. And lots and lots of people have to read and follow laws.
    - freejazz 2y ago
      [flagged]
- jancsika 2y ago
  > Despite your opening sentence, you didn't disagree with OP. They certainly did. coliveira is saying a change in legal language opens up a contract to a reasonably different interpretation in the future. And we know it's reasonable (even likely) because there are myriad historical precedents where such ambiguities were used in the past to win cases against, say, GrantMoyer's Optimized Non-Standard Legal Language Law Offices. By using standard language that specific class of ambiguity issues goes away. On the other hand, any good faith definition of "superstitious" is a pejorative that holds the belief to be irrational. So when GrantMoyer's Optimized Non-Standard Legal Language Law Offices uses its patent-pending optimized, non-standard language in their contracts, they are throwing out all the superstitious terminology on the basis that nothing bad will actually happen as a result of doing this. (At least, aside from things like random chance or any of the other true reasons that just happen coincide with superstitious falsehoods.) That's a bad idea-- it isn't supported by historical precedent, and it is likelihood to cause predictably bad outcomes in the future. The only mitigating factor is this weasel sentence: "Except sometimes the superstitions are right." But to be generous we must take that to mean only the truism that superstition sometimes coincides with things like random chance. (Otherwise it'd be like saying no one goes to a particular restaurant anymore because it's so crowded, which is funny but incoherent.) Edit: clarifications. Also, in closing, Your Honor, I call for one of those "bad court thingies." :)
FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
When I worked at a law firm that specialized in corporate law (in IT), they had a dedicated team just to find ways to exploit errors with wording and commas in contracts.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  Lawyers and hackers are very similar professions.
  - singleshot_ 2y ago
    I would tend to disagree with that, but if you’re also an attorney with a cybersecurity background, I’d love to know why you think this.
    - mewpmewp2 2y ago
      What about any sort of inspectors who try to find flaws in things, like e.g. buildings or otherwise?
  - ursamin 2y ago
    language lawyer: This is using a restricted (and much aligned) meaning of the word "hacker" and not the one codified by members of Hacker News.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      (maligned)
    - ValentineC 2y ago
      Just being pedantic and curious here: I'm assuming you're using "lawyer" casually with a "language" qualifier, not authorised to give professional legal advice, or specialising in legal language nuances?
      - rbanffy 2y ago
IshKebab 2y ago
The article disagrees with your comment. They found that the plainer English laws would be no less enforceable. Here's an example. Patent lawyers absolutely love the word "plurality", a very uncommon word in normal English. They mean "more than one", but why don't they say that? It's not only clearer but it's also less ambiguous (check the many definitions of "plurality"). It's because they are copying a rule without thinking about it. Other examples of that: * "an historical occasion" - this is wrong, it's "a historical occasion", but people hear it and think it's some special rule * Not using "I" in research papers, even with a single author! There's no rule that requires this but people think there is. I read a paper once that used "I". It was great.
- lupire 2y ago
  "an historical" is because that's more fluid to pronounce, not because of a false rule.
  - cgriswald 2y ago
    The use of “an” with “history” is likely a holdover of its French origins where the h isn’t pronounced or from English dialects where the h isn’t pronounced. It’s essentially a learned behavior at this point. If it was used solely because of ease of pronunciation we’d expect also to see “an history”, “an high five”, “an hit record”. But, in any case, for those who pronounce the h, “a historical” is easier to say. In the case of lawyers I’d suspect tradition first and fear of typos reversing meaning (“ahistorical”) second.
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    So you would say "an history lesson"? No.
    - dpe82 2y ago
      I say "an historical event" and I also say "a history lesson".
      - 2y ago

jimmydddd 2y ago

This is correct. If 50 cases interpret and define the word "includes" in a contract, and you decide to use the word "comprises," you may end up burning time and money in court and negotiations.

unethical_ban 2y ago
Do engineering specifications use the same center embedded sentences as legal documents? IETF defines may, must, shall, etc. in every document but doesn't use the same format as law.
- rbanffy 2y ago
  Law and technical standards are two places where language must be extremely precise to avoid misinterpretation. And destroying Mars probes because of mismatched units.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
    I have two different but reinforcing memories that support this. 1) I remember being in a Requirements Review meeting and spending an entire hour debating the meaning of a word. Don't remember the word, but it was something like "includes". 2) I separately remember being in a Requirements review for a feature that concluded successfully. Then later in a Design Review for that feature. And after that, Code and Unit Test reviews of the same feature. Then, months later, the feature was presented to the person who asked for it in the first place and then said, "that's not what I wanted. I wanted xxx instead." Yes, this person was at the Requirements and Design reviews!
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      Oh… also detectives. My colleagues say I don’t interview users. They say I interrogate them.
  - unethical_ban 2y ago
    Agreed. My point is that engineering documents read differently than legal documents, but have the same necessity for precision.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
rbanffy 2y ago
This would be a good case for restricted versions of our commonly used languages with as few words and constructs as possible on a simple and consistent grammar. Much like a programming language for defining law.
- delfinom 2y ago
  But then a contract would never be able to describe modern day inventions, processes or procedures as deliverables lol
  - kevindamm 2y ago
    You could, if you treated the object deliverable as a variable, with variables defined meta-circularly via a pre-representation. To do it, lawyers would have to learn some category theory, but I think many of them would enjoy it.
    - rbanffy 2y ago
      > but I think many of them would enjoy it. Many probably discovered it already, without realizing it has a name.
- webspinner 2y ago
  There was a book written about something like that in 1949. Well OK OK I'm half joking, since the book wasn't entirely about that!
- seritools 2y ago
  https://catala-lang.org/ https://catala-lang.org/
vivekd 2y ago
In law such words are called terms of art - but most lawyers know them and there's no reason for their use to create incomprehensible documents. It's not like every other word is a term of art. When I was I law school they taught us to write as clearly as possible and avoid legalese. Hopefully that catches on, I don't think legalese is good or necessary. Clarity is better
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  Really the main problem is trust and credibility, or lack thereof. Which necissitates all of these adaptations. There’s a famous story of Warren Buffet buying Nebraska Furnitur Mart with no paperwork whatsoever, just some verbal assurances, a handshake, and a TV interview with the esteemed owner.
- Breza 2y ago
  Well said. I spent years working with an attorney who was first an English major. He wrote the best contracts because his initial focus was making things readable and obvious. The legal formalities came second. I firmly believe that plain language will avoid legal disputes better than PUTTING A BUNCH OF LATIN IN ALL CAPS AD OSTENTATIONEM.

psychlops 2y ago

Despite your opening sentence, you didn't disagree with OP. "Courts" are a venue for other lawyers.

sdwr 2y ago
There's a constant tendency here to assume other people don't think, they blindly copy what's popular. Everybody learns partially through pattern recognition, partially from trial and error, partially from armchair reasoning. And functions mostly by repeating what they already know. But it's emotionally satisfying to put all the negative parts onto others (cargo cult sheeple reciting magic spells), and save all the positive identifiers for yourself (brave scientist uncovering truths about the universe)
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  Okay, but I don't see that happening here? Like, nobody is comparing my code to legalese. And if they did, I'd apologize profusely if normal people had to interact with my source code on a regular basis! I wouldn't try to defend writing it the same way I write it when a single digit number of people have to read it ever. And lots and lots of people have to read and follow laws.
  - freejazz 2y ago
    [flagged]
jancsika 2y ago
> Despite your opening sentence, you didn't disagree with OP. They certainly did. coliveira is saying a change in legal language opens up a contract to a reasonably different interpretation in the future. And we know it's reasonable (even likely) because there are myriad historical precedents where such ambiguities were used in the past to win cases against, say, GrantMoyer's Optimized Non-Standard Legal Language Law Offices. By using standard language that specific class of ambiguity issues goes away. On the other hand, any good faith definition of "superstitious" is a pejorative that holds the belief to be irrational. So when GrantMoyer's Optimized Non-Standard Legal Language Law Offices uses its patent-pending optimized, non-standard language in their contracts, they are throwing out all the superstitious terminology on the basis that nothing bad will actually happen as a result of doing this. (At least, aside from things like random chance or any of the other true reasons that just happen coincide with superstitious falsehoods.) That's a bad idea-- it isn't supported by historical precedent, and it is likelihood to cause predictably bad outcomes in the future. The only mitigating factor is this weasel sentence: "Except sometimes the superstitions are right." But to be generous we must take that to mean only the truism that superstition sometimes coincides with things like random chance. (Otherwise it'd be like saying no one goes to a particular restaurant anymore because it's so crowded, which is funny but incoherent.) Edit: clarifications. Also, in closing, Your Honor, I call for one of those "bad court thingies." :)

FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago

When I worked at a law firm that specialized in corporate law (in IT), they had a dedicated team just to find ways to exploit errors with wording and commas in contracts.

rbanffy 2y ago
Lawyers and hackers are very similar professions.
- singleshot_ 2y ago
  I would tend to disagree with that, but if you’re also an attorney with a cybersecurity background, I’d love to know why you think this.
  - mewpmewp2 2y ago
    What about any sort of inspectors who try to find flaws in things, like e.g. buildings or otherwise?
- ursamin 2y ago
  language lawyer: This is using a restricted (and much aligned) meaning of the word "hacker" and not the one codified by members of Hacker News.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    (maligned)
  - ValentineC 2y ago
    Just being pedantic and curious here: I'm assuming you're using "lawyer" casually with a "language" qualifier, not authorised to give professional legal advice, or specialising in legal language nuances?
    - rbanffy 2y ago

IshKebab 2y ago

The article disagrees with your comment. They found that the plainer English laws would be no less enforceable. Here's an example. Patent lawyers absolutely love the word "plurality", a very uncommon word in normal English. They mean "more than one", but why don't they say that? It's not only clearer but it's also less ambiguous (check the many definitions of "plurality"). It's because they are copying a rule without thinking about it. Other examples of that: * "an historical occasion" - this is wrong, it's "a historical occasion", but people hear it and think it's some special rule * Not using "I" in research papers, even with a single author! There's no rule that requires this but people think there is. I read a paper once that used "I". It was great.

lupire 2y ago
"an historical" is because that's more fluid to pronounce, not because of a false rule.
- cgriswald 2y ago
  The use of “an” with “history” is likely a holdover of its French origins where the h isn’t pronounced or from English dialects where the h isn’t pronounced. It’s essentially a learned behavior at this point. If it was used solely because of ease of pronunciation we’d expect also to see “an history”, “an high five”, “an hit record”. But, in any case, for those who pronounce the h, “a historical” is easier to say. In the case of lawyers I’d suspect tradition first and fear of typos reversing meaning (“ahistorical”) second.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  So you would say "an history lesson"? No.
  - dpe82 2y ago
    I say "an historical event" and I also say "a history lesson".
    - 2y ago