A recent issue of The Economist had an article on “Why legal writing is so awful”. The article listed several possible reasons: (i) the “curse of knowledge”; i.e., lawyers don’t know how to write for non-lawyers; (ii) by writing complex stuff, you can charge more for it; etc. The article concludes that the most likely reason is the “cut-and-paste” hypothesis. It is easy to copy what others have already done and add extra language, thus making things more complex, to fit the new situation.
After practicing law for 39 years, much of it writing contracts and other documents, one a joke, one more serious. The joke was that it was all part of an in-group game, sort of like the Scrabble®, we lawyers had going. And in that game, “notwithstanding the aforegoing” was triple word score.
More seriously, my real thought was this: When I was asked to write up something in a rush, I would tell people (in the spirit of Blaise Pascal) that if it can be long, I can do it quickly. Short and simple, however, will take longer. It requires more work and more time.
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