Quote:
Originally Posted by billamj
You may very well be right Dan and I could have misread it. Why the hell can't they write this stuff in English so anyone can understand it. Not meaning to insult Rule10b5 or GunLawyer, but this legalize could drive a sane man crazy.  |
actually, being the guy who gets tasked with negotiating/writing all of our license/service agreements (before they go off to our attorneys for final tweaking), i have come to understand why legal documents are written in "legalese".
when you start really asking "what if" and start "interpreting" the language to fit those different "what if" scenarios...and various exceptions to each what if scenario, you have to word things very precisely...which ends up being "legalese".
when i first started writing agreements, i tried to write them in plain english, but it never works because it leaves too much room for (mis)interpretation when you start trying to apply it to specific cases.
although legalese will give you a headache, if it is written correctly, it is actually much clearer than plain english in that it will leave very little room for misinterpretation and will cover nearly all possibly contingencies that might come up. plain english just can't do that in most cases.