5 ms·

But legalese is plain English. It's verbose in order to eliminate ambiguity and double meanings, not to be complex for complexity's sake.

oftenwrong 14y ago
Sometimes legalese is intentionally constructed to create ambiguity and double meanings.
- a3camero 14y ago
  It's more about using previously tested blocks of language. Here's a good example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalaya_clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalaya_clause Or the drafter may not be a very good writer! It's easy to fall back on legalese instead of taking the time to make something concise (see the article/video).
  - svdad 14y ago
    > It's more about using previously tested blocks of language. Here's a good example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalaya_clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalaya_clause Right; there's some cargo culting in legal writing. Until a particular form of words has been tested in court, no-one really knows whether it will stand up. If there's an untested standard form, most people won't want to experiment with a variation because if their variation happens to be the one that fails, there's a possibility of a negligence suit for not using the standard form. If there's a tested standard form, even fewer people will want to experiment, for the same reason.
    - erichocean 14y ago
      ...there's some cargo culting in legal writing... Some? In my experience, it rises to the level of "massive amounts of".
YokoZar 14y ago
This is clearly wrong. All you need to do is read a bit of legalese to someone, have them ask "what's that mean?", and then realize that what you say next to them is entirely different. Legalese has all manner of special constructs that have to be learned to understand.
- Evbn 14y ago
  Read a "plain English" document from 1850. Special constructs ("terms of art", or "programming languages"), are very useful.
DanBC 14y ago
There's a difference between a dense legal definition of what an escape door is (so that a small number of people can correctly create escape doors) and obfuscatory fluff that everybody should be adhering to but that nobody reads. ToS often feel like they've been created to give the company a get out clause for anything they want. (http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/less-than-words-can-say/12.htm http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/less-than-words-can-say...) > As it happens, that horrid prose serves its aims perfectly. Regulations of this nature have one clear purpose, and that is to answer, before the fact, any imaginable questions that might be asked in a court of law. There are some problems with The Underground Grammarian, but it's entertaining if you're in the right mood.
DannyBee 14y ago
Speaking as a lawyer, this is entirely false. The reason most legalese exists is because most lawyers are bad at writing, and reuse blocks of text from other lawyers who are bad at writing. It is entirely possible to write plain and understandable english that is legally unambiguous. As someone mentioned above, there has been a huge movement towards this in law schools. It has had some impact, but it's still going to be a long time. That said, even some of the older folks in the legal field hate legalese. When I clerked for an appeals court judge, we used to do two things: 1. Read every single opinion out loud to all the clerks in order to make sure it sounded sane and was understandable to the other folks at the table, who had no idea what the case was about. 2. Remove all unnecessary words and anachronisms. The judge used to pull out his copy of strunk and white and beat us over the head with it.
- einhverfr 14y ago
  And yet I have never seen a legal opinion to use the words "see above" or "see below." They always fall back on the Latin.
  - DannyBee 14y ago
    This is, AFAIK, because all of the standardized citation styles you could pick from require it.
    - einhverfr 14y ago
      Is there any case though of a Supreme Court justice facing any consequences for insisting on a non-standard citation style? What are they going to do, impeach for writing clearly?
einhverfr 14y ago
That's like saying The Odyssey was written in plain Attic Greek, which is false. As an amateur linguist, I would say that legalese (like Homeric Greek) is a specialized dialect which is both hyperdefined and formulaic (except that lawyers call formulas "terms of art"). As a piece of interesting trivia, Calvert Watkins suggests that formulas of Roman legalese derive from pre-Roman liturgical, magical, and mythological poetics so there probably is a connection between the formulaic dialect of Homer's epics and the legalese of today to the extent that it is related to Roman legalese.

oftenwrong 14y ago

Sometimes legalese is intentionally constructed to create ambiguity and double meanings.

a3camero 14y ago
It's more about using previously tested blocks of language. Here's a good example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalaya_clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalaya_clause Or the drafter may not be a very good writer! It's easy to fall back on legalese instead of taking the time to make something concise (see the article/video).
- svdad 14y ago
  > It's more about using previously tested blocks of language. Here's a good example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalaya_clause http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalaya_clause Right; there's some cargo culting in legal writing. Until a particular form of words has been tested in court, no-one really knows whether it will stand up. If there's an untested standard form, most people won't want to experiment with a variation because if their variation happens to be the one that fails, there's a possibility of a negligence suit for not using the standard form. If there's a tested standard form, even fewer people will want to experiment, for the same reason.
  - erichocean 14y ago
    ...there's some cargo culting in legal writing... Some? In my experience, it rises to the level of "massive amounts of".

YokoZar 14y ago

This is clearly wrong. All you need to do is read a bit of legalese to someone, have them ask "what's that mean?", and then realize that what you say next to them is entirely different. Legalese has all manner of special constructs that have to be learned to understand.

Evbn 14y ago
Read a "plain English" document from 1850. Special constructs ("terms of art", or "programming languages"), are very useful.

DanBC 14y ago

There's a difference between a dense legal definition of what an escape door is (so that a small number of people can correctly create escape doors) and obfuscatory fluff that everybody should be adhering to but that nobody reads. ToS often feel like they've been created to give the company a get out clause for anything they want. (http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/less-than-words-can-say/12.htm http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/less-than-words-can-say...) > As it happens, that horrid prose serves its aims perfectly. Regulations of this nature have one clear purpose, and that is to answer, before the fact, any imaginable questions that might be asked in a court of law. There are some problems with The Underground Grammarian, but it's entertaining if you're in the right mood.

DannyBee 14y ago

Speaking as a lawyer, this is entirely false. The reason most legalese exists is because most lawyers are bad at writing, and reuse blocks of text from other lawyers who are bad at writing. It is entirely possible to write plain and understandable english that is legally unambiguous. As someone mentioned above, there has been a huge movement towards this in law schools. It has had some impact, but it's still going to be a long time. That said, even some of the older folks in the legal field hate legalese. When I clerked for an appeals court judge, we used to do two things: 1. Read every single opinion out loud to all the clerks in order to make sure it sounded sane and was understandable to the other folks at the table, who had no idea what the case was about. 2. Remove all unnecessary words and anachronisms. The judge used to pull out his copy of strunk and white and beat us over the head with it.

einhverfr 14y ago
And yet I have never seen a legal opinion to use the words "see above" or "see below." They always fall back on the Latin.
- DannyBee 14y ago
  This is, AFAIK, because all of the standardized citation styles you could pick from require it.
  - einhverfr 14y ago
    Is there any case though of a Supreme Court justice facing any consequences for insisting on a non-standard citation style? What are they going to do, impeach for writing clearly?

einhverfr 14y ago

That's like saying The Odyssey was written in plain Attic Greek, which is false. As an amateur linguist, I would say that legalese (like Homeric Greek) is a specialized dialect which is both hyperdefined and formulaic (except that lawyers call formulas "terms of art"). As a piece of interesting trivia, Calvert Watkins suggests that formulas of Roman legalese derive from pre-Roman liturgical, magical, and mythological poetics so there probably is a connection between the formulaic dialect of Homer's epics and the legalese of today to the extent that it is related to Roman legalese.