Legal Language Is Deliberately Arcane To Signal Power, Study Finds (mit.edu) 133
A new MIT study reveals why legal documents are so hard to read: Both lawyers and non-lawyers instinctively use complex language to signal authority, similar to how magic spells use archaic terms. The research, published in PNAS, found that even laypeople default to convoluted "center-embedded" clauses when writing laws, but switch to plain language for other tasks. From a report:
[Edward] Gibson's [an MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences] research group has been studying the unique characteristics of legalese since 2020, when Martinez came to MIT after earning a law degree from Harvard Law School. In a 2022 study, Gibson, Martinez, and Mollica analyzed legal contracts totaling about 3.5 million words, comparing them with other types of writing, including movie scripts, newspaper articles, and academic papers.
That analysis revealed that legal documents frequently have long definitions inserted in the middle of sentences -- a feature known as "center-embedding." Linguists have previously found that this kind of structure can make text much more difficult to understand. "Legalese somehow has developed this tendency to put structures inside other structures, in a way which is not typical of human languages," Gibson says.
In a follow-up study published in 2023, the researchers found that legalese also makes documents more difficult for lawyers to understand. Lawyers tended to prefer plain English versions of documents, and they rated those versions to be just as enforceable as traditional legal documents. "Lawyers also find legalese to be unwieldy and complicated," Gibson says. "Lawyers don't like it, laypeople don't like it, so the point of this current paper was to try and figure out why they write documents this way."
That analysis revealed that legal documents frequently have long definitions inserted in the middle of sentences -- a feature known as "center-embedding." Linguists have previously found that this kind of structure can make text much more difficult to understand. "Legalese somehow has developed this tendency to put structures inside other structures, in a way which is not typical of human languages," Gibson says.
In a follow-up study published in 2023, the researchers found that legalese also makes documents more difficult for lawyers to understand. Lawyers tended to prefer plain English versions of documents, and they rated those versions to be just as enforceable as traditional legal documents. "Lawyers also find legalese to be unwieldy and complicated," Gibson says. "Lawyers don't like it, laypeople don't like it, so the point of this current paper was to try and figure out why they write documents this way."
Precision (Score:5, Insightful)
From the lawyers I listen to and talk to, they are overly verbose because, in general, laws, contracts and case law requires them to be. There have been multimillion dollar lawsuits over what a comma means. The default is to be as verbose and precise as possible in your language. It has nothing to do with feelings of superiority, it has everything to do with protecting yourself or your clients from expensive lawsuits.
Loopholes (Score:5, Interesting)
Sit down and read the official rules of basketball from the 1950s and compare it to the official rules of basketball from 2020. Way more verbose and way more complex because all sorts of rules had to be added in order to make the game interesting and competitive as better and bigger and more athletic players found ways around the rules. It's the same for every sport.
Law works the same way. Better lawyers figure out new tricks and you have to add more and more complexity to the law to address those tricks. It doesn't help that lobbyists often try to sneak things in to complex language as well but that's a different matter
Poor commenting standards (Score:5, Interesting)
Computer code is arcane and precise and verbose, which is why there are comments to explain in concise English what the intent is. Perhaps legal code should too.
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Most laws have such documentation by the people who wrote the law. The courts often rely on it to interpret the intent. This has been common for at least as long as the US has existed.
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The comments are often similar to references. The code says exactly what it's doing, whereas the comments say things like "we're doing this because protocol X wants this." or "we have to clear this register because of bug Y in the CPU." Legal documents do similar, but they try to shove it all together in lengthy run-on sentences.
Software often has the problem that the code and comments are often changed without keeping the corresponding code/comment in synch. Thus you can't trust the comments :-)
Patents
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The problem with comments is that if some lawyer finds a loophole or interpretation that makes them inaccurate, the comment writer becomes liable.
Comments in code are intended for other programmers, not lay people.
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This is likely to cause more problems than it solves. The problem with almost all human languages is that they are not precise and easily subject to misinterpretation. Adding comments will likely increase the chance of conflicting interpretation particularly when dealing adversaries.
Computer code is extremely precise since one can always run t
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You need that kind of precision because it's a lawyer's job to find as many loopholes in the law as possible.
Sit down and read the official rules of basketball from the 1950s and compare it to the official rules of basketball from 2020. Way more verbose and way more complex because all sorts of rules had to be added in order to make the game interesting and competitive as better and bigger and more athletic players found ways around the rules. It's the same for every sport.
Law works the same way. Better lawyers figure out new tricks and you have to add more and more complexity to the law to address those tricks. It doesn't help that lobbyists often try to sneak things in to complex language as well but that's a different matter
I agree with your point on lawyers but it seems a peculiarly American thing to make sports so complex. If you took a look at the rules of Cricket (the only sport in the world more boring than Baseball) from the 1800's and compare them to today, they will have changed but not become so arcane and burdensome that a 8 year old couldn't grasp them. Same with Soccer.
American football has been described to me as Tax Code: The Sport... It's ended up with a game of 4 x 15 min quarters takes takes 3 hours to play
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Sit down and read the official rules of basketball from the 1950s and compare it to the official rules of basketball from 2020.
And yet, somehow or another, we have more traveling and double dribbling than we did back then. It is almost like there aren't any rules at all anymore.
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I would tend to disagree but maybe it's professional deformation; in code and algorithms, we often say simple is beautiful, easier to understand and less prone to ambiguity. Given that, I don't see why "removing ambiguity in the language of the contract" would add complexity, quite the contrary actually. Complexity usually add ambiguity IMHO.
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I think that all depends on what you mean by "simple". Is it simple if it has as few lines of code as possible? As many lines of code as possible? What about efficiency? One common way to gain efficiency in Assembly Languages, for example, is to do things like unwrapping unnecessary loops. If you know it will only loop a limited number of times, get rid of those unnecessary comparisons and jumps and just write out all the iterations, not simpler by one definition, a lot simpler by another, What about spin l
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This reminds me of an on and off argument I have had with several people about mechanical efficiency. Their argument was the simpler the better and that adding parts to a mechanical system inevitably accelerates its breakdown, My argument to them was "what about shock absorbers, and heat expansion joints and, for that matter, why can my arm, which has billions or trillions more parts than my phone cable, bend so many more times than my phone cable without breaking". For some reason, I've never gotten an answer to that which doesn't simply dodge my counterarguments, Basically, in my experience, complexity in code and mechanical design often manages to add robustness.
The argument is pointless; rather you need to say, "What are you adding and what is the cost?" If you're adding lines of code, every line of code needs to be tested. If the code is hard to read, the bugs won't be obvious to the reader, so the cost is more bugs. A lot of people add error handling code (which adds complexity), but then they don't test it.
So you could write code to make your server automatically fail over to another server in case of hardware fault, but if you don't test that code, then it'
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Odd. Thought I replied to this.
This was not really about cost, it was about simplicity. Cost has very little to do with simplicity. Simplicity can be cheaper, or it can be tremendously more expensive. A block of gold is generally considered pretty simple to a complex mechanical device made of iron. That also includes multiple definitions of cost since gold not only has a higher price, but the effort required to collect all that gold through mining and refining is more than that required to mine and refine a
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It's a slightly different case. There is no ambiguity in code* because we have a perfect judge/interpreter in the compiler**. You can write code that is more or less difficult to understand and modify by another coder (lawyer), but the code will mean one specific thing. The parallel is that both code and a legal document are 'better' when they achieve the goal of correct meaning with greater simplicity. Also complicated code/legal runs the risk of a loophole not achieving correct meaning, but it may be nece
Re:Loopholes (Score:4, Interesting)
rule #1: Write simply and carefully!
And then they use 507 more words to flesh out that one point. Kinda illustrative of the argument, I'd say.
"Simply and carefully" in this case boils down to don't use synonyms, and be concise.
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The problem there is that the precision is mismatched. I had to review a 60-page legal contract last week, and "my" lawyer indicated that the subtleties of one clause were inapplicable to another clause, despite a fundamental conflict between the two. Going back to your example of the Oxford comma, if you look for context in a contract or law then all the subtleties matter.
I am all for specificity, but in the end simplicity in communication structure is far superior. List format is much cleaner than the ver
Re:Precision (Score:5, Insightful)
Exceptions Prove the Rules.
The law isn't there for the rules, it is to flesh out the exceptions. The rules seem clear and absolute, until they don't.
Simple rule: Do not kill
Exception: it's okay if you're defending your own life
Exception to the exception: unless you started the fight
And this goes on and on until it is complex string of exceptions to the otherwise simple rule.
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And yet, as with programming, it's literally impossible to cover every edge case (which you call "exceptions").
Your example of conflicting principles is a feature, not a bug. Systems of principles or laws or agreements will *always* have conflicts. You cannot enumerate an answer to every one.
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Except legal documents aren't written the way you wrote. They're not written is a sequence of if/then/else clauses. They're shoved together often in run-on sentences. That's what the article is specifically pointing out, not that there are lots of exceptions and rules, but that the exceptions and rules are written down in such a way that even trained lawyers get confused by the grammar.
The verbose and convoluted grammar is not required for a document to be legal. Clauses, within clauses, within other cl
Re:Precision (Score:4)
I am all for specificity, but in the end simplicity in communication structure is far superior. List format is much cleaner than the verbosity 99% of the time.
Specificity and simplicity are mutually exclusive. Generalising creates simplicity. The problem is the entire legal profession exists purely as an exercise of determining edge cases (along with a few stupidly obvious lawsuits).
As for list format, most contracts are already numbered paragraphs. The act of being a list doesn't make something simple.
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Specificity and simplicity are mutually exclusive
That's a there simple statement.
They are not mutually exclusive, and they do not need to use jargon like Latin. You can rant on all you like trying to cover every case you want but if a Judge wants to rule against you they will the will come up with a rationalization as to why they can no matter how much is written. Take for example Roe vs Wade, if laws where specific how could two sets of judges come up with 2 different interpretations. No lawyer will guarantee that you will win a case, why? Because despi
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Take for example Roe vs Wade, if laws where specific how could two sets of judges come up with 2 different interpretations.
Because the law they were citing (the 14th amendment) is intentionally vague, that's why.
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The article is not about making legal language shorter. Shorter is not "simpler". But you can keep the same number of words, and be just as precise, without having convoluted grammar. In particular the "center clause" problem which is normally rare in English outside of legal docs. The article also is not talking about Latin terms. In fact, the Latin terms exist for the purpose of making the document simpler; they're well know terms in the industry and serve is a shorthand for complex ideas.
For center
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There was an episode of ST:TNG, The Ensigns of Command [fandom.com], where the Enterprise has three days to evacuate people from a planet which was previously ceded to the Sheliak Corporate, or else the people will be killed. As the link indicates, the Federation originally sent 372 lawyers to negotiate the treaty.
Picard finds a clause in the treaty which gives them the out they need to perform the evacuation over a longer period of time. In paragraph 1290 [youtube.com]. S
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Law is also built on precedent in both statute and prior findings. If the language of those is complex, nuanced, and precise, then further contracts or law built upon those prior conditions will very likely have to be just as complex, nuanced, and precise.
Courts have ruled on the nature of the spirit of the law versus the text of the law, but it can be uncertain which way such rulings will go.
Science does the Same (Score:2)
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Re:Precision (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to have to file taxes in the US. The IRS tax instructions also need to be precise, yet they somehow manage to make them understandable to ordinary people. Which makes sense, since ordinary people have to follow the instructions.
Seems to me that ordinary people also have to follow the laws. Hence, the laws should be written the same way.
On the same point: It should also be realistically possible to read all of the laws that apply to you. That means limiting their size to - say - 3 or 4 novels. Maybe a million words or so. Need a new law? Find an old one to knock out.
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It should also be realistically possible to read all of the laws that apply to you.
That's like saying "it should be realistically possible to read about and understand the inner workings of my car's engine." Sure, if you're a mechanic. But a car, like the law, is a complex beast by nature, and with such things the layperson will often need the assistance of an expert in that domain.
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If you read the article.. wait, what am I suggesting, that's nonsense!
The article points out that even the laywers themselves are confused by this language. The article also points out that they do NOT need to be this complex, but they are complex because they seem better that way and they invoke a sense of authority even if no actual additonal authority exists. It mentions "magic spells", aka incantations. They sound better that way. Sort of like the utterly optional and irrelevant line at the end of
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Lawyers tended to prefer plain English versions of documents, and they rated those versions to be just as enforceable as traditional legal documents.
If that's the case, then why haven't all those lawyers put their money where there mouths are and written their documents in plain English? At this point, the entire legal world should have seen the brilliance of it and followed suit. And yet, when is the last time you saw a legal document written in plain English? Probably never. Or so infrequently that it's statistically close to zero.
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This is the first time I've ever heard anyone say they thought the IRS tax instructions were "understandable." If they are so understandable, why do the majority of people use tax software or tax preparers to file their taxes for them? This market exists precisely because IRS rules are *difficult* to understand.
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Because once you're doing the full 1040 it is no longer straight forward and there are terms that are very unfamiliar to the layperson. But the tax professional understand it, and it is straight forward to them. Whereas for lawyers, even they are often confused by legalistic grammar. Not the words of the documents, but the grammar of the documents.
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Seems simple enough to me - you need receipts, that are specific, for each of those out-of-pocket living expenses. And a copy of the school's published cost of attendance. And a copy of the relevant IRS publication.
Collect them together in one envelope to put in your shoebox of receipts, labeled nicely, and forget about them until and unless you are audited.
If no audit, go on with your life. If audited, pull the receipts out, the IRS pub out, and the school docs and make your case as to why they should be
Its holistic mindshare (Score:2)
They're expiditing their core values in a textual rightsizing methodology and incubating a multichannel advocate scenario via the document visioneer opening a dialog with thesaurial dynamics.
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Verbosity does not mean precision, the more verbose you are the more are liable to introduce loopholes, especially if someone is looking for them. Natural language by its very nature is imprecise.
What you said maybe their rationalization as to why verbose language is needed, however I believe it is to protect their jobs with terminology. Using an arcane language like Latin does not add precision, it just means that untrained people find it hard to understand.
Also its not just lawyers that do this most profe
Re:Precision (Score:5, Insightful)
Verbosity does not mean precision, the more verbose you are the more are liable to introduce loopholes, especially if someone is looking for them. Natural language by its very nature is imprecise.
You are conflating natural language, where you are correct, with domain-specific or technical language, where you are wrong.
Using an arcane language like Latin does not add precision, it just means that untrained people find it hard to understand.
They use Latin where they are referring to specific legal concepts or principals. For example, pro se means something very specific, that you are representing yourself in court, you are acting as your own lawyer, and you are litigating your own case. It means all of those things .You can write out all of that in a proceeding, or you can just say pro se, which means *exactly* that.
Also its not just lawyers that do this most professions do, doctors, accountants, builder and even computer industry use jargon to make them fell superior to the plebs.
So you think professionals should be less verbose *and* not use technical jargon? Good lord.
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I agree with most of what you said, but acronyms exists for a good reason (yes they need to be explained if not know, but we need them). Can you imagine having a conversation where there were no acronyms like: RAM, CRT, LCD, LED, FIFO, DR (since you mentioned it), SaaS, HTML, and so on. What if you had to give the full words every time you now use the acronym? We'd never have brief conversations again. :)
Re:Precision (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed. Due to my work, I often have to cite law and bills under consideration. Not everyone can read it well because they don't understand the actual logic of language. Example:
State Lawcode Chapter 10, 44231
(a) A computer sold in the State shall be the color orange while for sale.
(1) The buyer of a computer may change the color after purchase.
That seems straightforward to many, but law is written to be exact because people will always try to skirt the law for their own benefit, so GOOD law takes more steps that requires further reading. If you read on, you'll likely find:
State Lawcode Chapter 10, 44200
(a) For the purposes of this chapter, the following definitions apply unless otherwise stated;.
(1) "Computer" means an electronic device consisting of processors of various types, data storage, and a means of inputting information. It is typically not easily portable by the average person and requires a separately powered monitor to view information. For the purposes of this chapter, laptops, smartphones, and other computer-like devices built for easy transport are not computers.
(2) "Buyer" means the original retail purchaser of a computer and any subsequent purchaser, recipient, or owner of a computer who takes possession after the original purchase by the first buyer.
(A) For the purposes of this chapter, "buyer" does not include a person, business, or other entity that purchases a computer with the intent to sell the computer again without first using the computer for its intended purpose.
State Lawcode Chapter 10, 44231.1
(a) For the purposes of this section, "Orange" can be a variety of shades of orange, but must be generally acceptable as "orange" by a reasonable person with normal eyesight.
Those terms get defined because if they're not, someone will try to argue their definition while making a claim in court and it's best to define EVERYTHING. This will sometimes result in weird, exclusive definitions (like the "computer definition" above), but it typically for a reason. For example, "desktop computer" isn't used because one would then have to differentiate between computers intended to be placed on the desk vs. floor vs. remote connection, etc.
The headline uses the term "archaic", but while they sometimes use Latin, MOST law uses the language from the era it was written and everything is defined. It's not so much "archaic" as it is specific to the industry (jargon). I'm sure that a lawyer asking about the reasons why certain data cannot easily be pulled together would find the descriptions of one-to-many and many-to-one relationships as esoteric. They're not hard to understand for the sake of obfuscation, though. They're as descriptive as they need to be for the intended audience.
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An all-in-one desktops would not fall under the computer definition even though it has a 27 inch screen and is not portable.
And that's a problem with all types of law. Definitions get set, technologies change, and suddenly you get a new thingimobobber that doesn't fit neatly into a particular definition, so it gets treated as a whizbang in this area and a widget in that area until the legislators are sufficiently convinced that modifying the law is necessary.
In a changing environment, there is always room for more legislation.
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In US law, any ambiguity in a contract must be interpreted in favor of the side that did not write the contract.
It is better to be verbose than to lose because you were not clear and specific as to expectations.
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They're not talking about basic verbosity here, nor the specialized jargon lawyers have developed, nor the Latin they use to represent it. They're talking about a specific grammatical construction.
Attributing motives is always sketchy though. It could be job security rather than authority, although I'm sure that's a benefit too. Then the title annoyingly equates "authority" with "power." Gibson himself suggests it might just be a traditional stylistic thing:
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they are overly verbose because, in general, laws, contracts and case law requires them to be
This is kind of like how the "Paperwork Reduction Act" requires *more* paperwork to document that the necessary documents follow the prescribed reductions of the act.
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And yet, despite all the volumes of legalese design to plug loopholes, lawyers will *always* find a loophole that was missed.
The reality is, as with writing code, it's impossible to cover every edge case.
So the net effect of all the extra prose is...more hourly fees for lawyers. Nothing else.
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Like every highly technical profession, Lawyers use special phrases and words which have not just a plain English meaning but a correlation with specific legal precedent, some going back centuries. They use these words and phrases because a court will understand them to mean the whole weight of the precedent with all its minutiae, not just the brief plain English.
Think: "object oriented programming." There's a weight of years of training and practice behind those three words, without which you won't fully u
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And yet software specs aren't written that way, and they're also verbose and concise. For example, definitions in a specification are listed separately, often near the beginnign of the doc. Whereas many legal documents put the definition within a sentence where the term is first used. Clauses and subclauses in the same sentence, making them hard to parse.
Ie, in one legal doc I have handy, it has "(hereinafter referred to as 'agent')" in the sentence where the name of the agent is first used, in the first
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So, this study has just been repeating something scholars observed 50+ years ago about legal language.
Of course, yes, legal language does have its reasons to be verbose, but it does also fly in the face of jargons use in other fields where jargon is valued for its terseness.
If I'm using the term "tensor" in maths I'm using it because its easier to say tensor than "a matrix that functions as a generalization of both scalars and vectors". Its terse, and its precise. And its not verbose.
The fact that laws and
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I'm sure loopholes is why human law is written this way, while the bible is much simpler.
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The study identified a particular grammatical structure that is widely considered to be less understandable (by lawyers, without improving the legal wording). It found that this grammatical structure is used more often when lawyers write official documents.
The headline makes it seem like the lawyers are trying to throw their power around, but that's not supported by the paper.
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No it doesn't as IT and programming no matter how specific the specs a customer gives me, if I am in any doubt I will clarify. And even after doing my best at implementing what I believe the customer wants it will go through user acceptance testing to be certain and there are inevitably differences of opinion. The spec is irrelevant at that point apart from who pays for the changes the product has to be what the customer wanted.
In the end its about balance, spending years developing a spec starts to get dim
Conspiracy Theory (Score:5, Informative)
The idea that legal language is *deliberately* arcane to signal power is a conspiracy theory that is unworthy of academic study. How about look into ways to help lawyers communicate more effectively with shorter and fewer sentences, less arcane language, and with fewer mid sentence definitions? Lawyers are not out to get you by writing purposely confusing language. Most of them aren't anyway. Insulting them is not exactly going to help the situation either.
Not all Lawyers are the Same (Score:2)
How about look into ways to help lawyers communicate more effectively with shorter and fewer sentences, less arcane language, and with fewer mid sentence definitions?
Surely lawyers can already do this well, or at least the barristers who argue criminal cases. I doubt they'd persuade any jury with complex, legalistic language - they need to be able to acurately explain complex concepts to average members of the public.
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You mention barristers so I'm assuming you're not in the US, and this may not be applicable to you... in the US juries are arbiters of fact not law. On questions of law, after hearing all the testimony and before beginning deliberations, juries are presented with instructions from the court that the jury uses to apply the facts they have determined to the case in question. The instructions typically break the law down into elements that the jury can understand and present questions the jury can answer to
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in the US juries are arbiters of fact not law.
Yes, but they have to determine whether those facts mean that someone has broken the law because they only provide a guilty/not guilty verdict and to do that they have to understand the law which means that someone has to explain it to them in cases where the law is complex. My uncle used to be a bank inspector for a major bank in the UK and the few times when he uncovered illegal activity and had to go to court he always said that the difficulty the prosecutors had with the case was getting the jury to un
Re:Not all Lawyers are the Same (Score:4, Interesting)
in the US juries are arbiters of fact not law.
Yes, but they have to determine whether those facts mean that someone has broken the law because they only provide a guilty/not guilty verdict and to do that they have to understand the law which means that someone has to explain it to them in cases where the law is complex. My uncle used to be a bank inspector for a major bank in the UK and the few times when he uncovered illegal activity and had to go to court he always said that the difficulty the prosecutors had with the case was getting the jury to understand complex financial laws and how they applied to the case in question. It was not enough for the jury to believe the fact that the defendant did X they also had to understand why X was illegal before they could reach a guilty verdict.
Yes... this is exactly the purpose of jury instructions, as I was trying to explain (I apparently did quite a poor job of explaining, my apologies).
For example, here [wilawlibrary.gov] are the model jury instructions from the state of Wisconsin for "first degree intentional homicide" (what most people would call "murder.") These model instructions will be modified for the specifics of the case (the prosecution and defense offer specific changes they believe are necessary, and the judge decides which of those modifications should be included based on the arguments) and the jury will follow them to render their verdict.
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Lawyers are not out to get you by writing purposely confusing language.
Except for those intentional situations such as: /s
- Writing EULAs that need to obfuscate the super creepy parts
- Making it seem like you won't get screwed by your health/auto/house/etc insurance policy
- Limited warranties
Kidding, I don't really know how these things come to exist.
Do lawyers actually write these things? As in humans that are also lawyers?
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The idea that legal language is *deliberately* arcane to signal power is a conspiracy theory that is unworthy of academic study. How about look into ways to help lawyers communicate more effectively with shorter and fewer sentences, less arcane language, and with fewer mid sentence definitions? Lawyers are not out to get you by writing purposely confusing language. Most of them aren't anyway. Insulting them is not exactly going to help the situation either.
Traditionally that's how languages have been used. Legalese being a melange of English, French and Latin is no exception. Same with clergy, keeping their bibles in Latin as the hoi polloi learned to read and write they could maintain power over the masses by controlling religion and law. I bet the Vatican to this day still curses Gutenberg's name.
Simplified Chinese was developed to make it easier for peasants, who had to work all day, to learn the language. Languages have been kept deliberately obtuse pr
Plain English Campaign (Score:5, Interesting)
The Plain English Campaign (PEC) has had some success in the UK. It should be emulated in the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
While we are about it, please bring back Plain Dealing. I'm looking at you, junk fees. https://ultimatelexicon.com/de... [ultimatelexicon.com]
Job Security /s (Score:3)
While legalese is "job security" -- it is MORE than "just" some power trip.
Language, especially English, is hideously ambiguous. Lawyers and Judges, when not corrupt, are TRYING to be precise. i.e. The letter of the law vs the spirit of the Law.
Take for instance stealing vs copyright infringement and people incorrectly applying them.
You CAN'T steal software; all you can do is COPY it because it is literally just a number. The MEDIUM is DIFFERENT so lawyers and judges use different words because they are more precise.
Is legalese bloated? Definitely.
The more common a word the shorter it gets. Television -> TV, carriage -> car, etc.
Just like those bizarre signs you see ... (Score:2)
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Similarly, when you see hyper-specific legal language, it's because some lawyer had exploited looser language in a similar case, not to "signal power".
I own at least one firearm that is literally engraved with a warning an entire paragraph long that boils down to not to load it, point it at another human being, and pull the trigger, because that could result in gross bodily injury or death. Legal language is what it is because litigants made it that way.
Duh. In other words: (Score:2)
In the software biz we call this (Score:4, Insightful)
..."spaghetti code". It may technically work, but is a PITA to figure out and change.
Can we leverage these action points? (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but our digital prophets with a brand value can rightsize and re-facilitate the cohesiveness of this argument vis-a-vis the vision enabled by the article of collaborative delegation to core process output of the legal word space.
Pro actively the cornerstone onboarder of this whiteboard results driven idea sanctum ran up the flagpole and found a high G inpact study when the pole was found not to be fully committed to the actualised challenge though he was enabled as a big hitter with the thought l
lawyers shall use "shall" (Score:5, Insightful)
25 year lawyer here. This story strikes home as the use of needlessly complex language in legal writing has always pissed me off. In many instances, the goals the parties are trying to achieve require the use of some complex sentences and provisions. But in too many cases, the complexity is just a needless attempt to sound important. Or worse, it is evidence of a reluctance to understand what you're actually providing to your clients. Many of the worst offenses are found in templates that have been circulating in the profession for decades and lawyers simply copy garbage without really understanding it.
My pet peeve is the word "shall," which I try to avoid whenever possible. Way back when I was a baby lawyer, I was given a document to review in which "shall" had four different meanings, one of which was completely inexplicable (it literally had no meaning that I could articulate). I ended up editing the word out of the entire document, replacing it with "must", "may", or other words and phrases that have clearly distinguishable definitions which normal people regularly use (or just eliminating the word entirely in the few instances where it had no meaning). The partner who gave me the assignment ended up putting them all back in (including the instances in which the word had no meaning).
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Well, I'm no fan of "shall," but I can imagine that in various boilerplate, precedent has established what "shall" means in that boilerplate, and changing it invites new challenges.
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In the specific document I was referring to in my original reply, you could generally infer the intended meaning from the overall context. That is, sometimes the "shall" was intended to mean something mandatory (i.e. "must" or "has a duty to"). In other cases, it was most likely intended to be permissive (i.e. "may"). But why create the possibility for confusion? And then there those instances in which the intended meaning couldn't be inferred (if the word had any meaning at all). For example, I often
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In this case, I think "shall have" and "shall" are terms with different meanings, similar to how "will have" and "will" are terms with different meanings.
E.g. "If the Buyer will have paid the amounts owning, the Seller will transfer title".
Re: lawyers shall use "shall" (Score:2)
My pet peeve is the word "shall," which I try to avoid whenever possible.
Is that you, Katz [the-scp.foundation]?
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https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc... [rfc-editor.org]
Also
https://www.goodreads.com/quot... [goodreads.com]
Dumb analysis (Score:2)
Gotta publish....
They're focusing on this sort of thing:
Betty Smith will give to her mother Gloria Smith (hereinafter "Gloria") one million dollars (the "Payment") on December 1st (the "Payment Date"). Gloria agrees to deposit the Payment at First National Bank (the "Bank") on the Payment Date.
And saying that you only do that in legal writing, not when you're telling a narrative story.
In a narrative story, you might say this:
Betty gave her mom $1M in December 1st. On that date, she deposited it at First
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OTOH, computer programmers also have to write clear and unambiguous text for computers, utterly devoid of intelligence, artificial or otherwise.
We solved this problem about 70 years ago by providing the facility to name pieces
Study discovers putting things in water (Score:2)
makes them wet!
"center embedded" ? (Score:2)
If there is nothing central to what they are trying to say, then it sounds like they aren't saying anything. That's what Derrida overlooked.
All for clearing out archaic language though.
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That's what Derrida overlooked.
Come on. You're not going to stuff a phrase explaining who Jacques Derrida is right in the middle of your sentence?
Finally, a good use for AI (Score:2)
Put those AIs to work translating legalese to human English.
Hell, we should start with privacy policies.
Someone had to fund a study on this? (Score:2)
I think whomever wrote this paper is falling victim to the very thing they are "studying".
Look like 2020 is still alive... (Score:2, Informative)
...where everything is rooted in power and systemic racism.
The author, Eric Martinez, is a graduate student who specializes in :"the cognitive foundations of the law."
https://saxelab.mit.edu/lab_me... [mit.edu]
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Here we have Mr. Cognitive Foundation hammering law.
Need google-translate "Lawyer--English" (Score:2)
This is a job either for AI (well maybe not...hallucinations), or google translate, for a new language called "lawyer".
(anyone remember the unix command line program 'jive'? it converts English into jive (sort of 'ebonics' of the 1960s), it was funny as hell, but actually quite good!
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Actually, AI is really good at this. Google's NotebookLM https://notebooklm.google.com/... [google.com] lets you upload legal documents and ask questions about them. Yes, hallucinations are possible, but these systems are getting better all the time.
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Just Legal Language? (Score:2)
Lawyers have their own vocabulary and language (Score:2)
As a programmer, I don't want to provide instructions to my computer in English (or any natural language). I need a subset of human language that is precise and unambiguous. I don't want nuance and multiple meanings to trip up the interpretation of my instructions.
Part of the court room discourse is a ritualized performance that is designed to keep laypeople at arm's length from the domain of JD's. But another aspect of legal language is that lawmakers and lawyers need a industrial sub-language that is well
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As a programmer, I don't want to provide instructions to my computer in English (or any natural language).
I do. But as a programmer, I'm willing to accept a structured definition of a programing block which includes data declarations and other similar constructs that apply to the context. Law doesn't work like that. Individual sentences, or even phrases, can be struck down. Practically, this may result in changing the entire meaning of the law. But often, a separability clause [lsd.law] is included in a bill in an attempt to rescue unchallenged parts. Even when the best solution might be "throw it all out and send it bac
opportunity (Score:2)
Well, if the language is hard for humans to understand, it's a perfect task for LLMs to translate it to identically accurate easier to understand language.
Legalese v. Precision (Score:2)
Hmmm. There seems to be a consensus being built around "precision" on this. I am no different -- as a former sysadmin, precision in my tech docs was a requirement, especially when it came to enforcing unpopular IT policies and/or complex technical work-arounds. However, precision alone is not the ultimate goal. Precision is the foundation of intent and enforceability, as any tort lawyer who has survived contract law will affirm. Without it, duties, breaches, and damages become open to ambiguous interpr
I agree even though everyone else doesnt (Score:2)
Its amusing to see a study done with controls and research and you all are likeâ¦. Nope.
I see this all the time. Simple example. I want you to stop doing something. In the order of assertiveness, saying please or asking is worst. Telling is better, saying stop is good but you really need to say stop and never do this again.
But to flex some intelligence its harsher still to just say Cease and Desist. Sounds scary. Especially to say so much with big words.
Being extra verbose is also kinda scary, lik
Italy (Score:2)
Not primarily I'd say. (Score:2)
Being part of an "in-group" is a power thing and language is a source for that, but I don't think that's the primary mover of this issue.
The problem is with precision and abstraction. A human word is from this PoV waaaaay closer to Bytecode than it is to reality. The more precise you want to get with your language, the more "abstract" and arbitrary its vocabulary becomes. This is the same things regulars observe when they listen to us IT experts talking. Superficially it appears to be a power thing until th
this just in.... (Score:2)
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The phrase "Now or at any point in time" simply means "Now,"
Does it, though? What if that "point in time" is tomorrow? That's certainly not "now".
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Seems like a dream job for properly trained LLM
Because LLMs have a reputation for handling complicated complicated corner cases and special conditions with great accuracy?