Is 'legalese' really a high-level language? It seems to contain a ton of boilerplate. Signal-to-noise ratio is quite low in reality. It could much more succinct

Is 'legalese' really a high-level language? It seems to contain a ton of boilerplate. Signal-to-noise ratio is quite low in reality. It could much more succinctly be encoded in a formal language. Also, I think you exaggerate the 'Scala is bad because DSLs' point. There are indeed a lot of libraries which overuse symbols but you are not obligated to use them. I have found the Scala I've written and read personally to be both concise and readable. And, Scala isn't the first or the last to 'reach for the expressivity goal'. See: Haskell, Scheme, F#, & ML.