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Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

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Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#201

Post by AlbertCory »

sseagull wrote: post #187
AlbertCory wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. A long phrase requires the user to keep the entire meaning in their head until the end. Can you show us some "long readable phrases"?

Long, readable phrases (in literature, anyway) tend to be made up of independent clauses with semicolons, and are perfectly understandable (to me, anyway). I sometimes prefer long sentences in some forms of literature - short sentences can be choppy and halting. "He was indistinctly conscious that the pardon of this priest was the greatest assault and the most formidable attack which had moved him yet; that his obdur…

semi-colons do help, as does numbering. Using the "and" also helps.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#202

Post by pstuart »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience", this monstrosity was a recent Texas constitutional ballot proposal, i.e. all voters in the state were asked to vote on it: > The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school pu…

It would be interesting to see what ML/AI could do rephrasing analysis of legislation.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#203

Post by AlbertCory »

dtgriscom wrote: post #173
AlbertCory wrote: post #88

IANAL, but I AM a patent agent, which means I passed the Patent Bar. So I haven't dealt in contracts, but a lot of the same considerations apply to patent claims. There is some claim language which is absolutely not required and any lawyer who uses it is just showing off. The article mentioned "aforesaid" which is a prime example in contracts (in patent claims, it's just "said"). For example: A TCP packet, comprising…

In 1990 I worked with a lawyer to submit a patent (cool idea, although it never made me any money). We were both new to the process, so it was a learning opportunity all around. A priority of mine was to use clear and transparent language. So, I'd write something up that was human-readable, he'd legalese it, I'd re-human-readable it, and we'd iterate. It felt like we were taking a walk through document space; he'd pu…

Not bad! Except you used "said":

> a plurality of non-intersecting surfaces arranged in layers, each surface comprising multiple units, combinations of said units forming passing and blocking tuples, each tuple comprising one unit from each of said surfaces such that the projected path of any specific particle through the filter traverses a single tuple

In fairness, I'm not sure "the" was generally accepted in 1991.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#204

Post by georgeecollins »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience", this monstrosity was a recent Texas constitutional ballot proposal, i.e. all voters in the state were asked to vote on it: > The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school pu…

In my (limited) experience I have seen very smart and talented people craft confusing agreements for these reasons:

_ They start with an agreement drafted by one person and then many people propose or insist on edits, but because the process is a negotiation the tendency is not to rewrite the agreement but instead to tack on language from another author in a way that is confusing. Sometimes you end up saying the same thing twice in slightly different ways because two people wanted to say the thing in two ways and you want to just move on in a negotiation.

_ You often work from a complicated agreement that has worked in the past and has all sorts of phrases and clauses from previous versions. People hate to change things and if they do make a change it is usually to add more.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#205

Post by jimz »

chaps wrote: post #29
johndhi wrote: post #15

I am a lawyer who works with but doesn't do a MASSIVE amount of contract writing like some. I don't think "poor writing" is the right phrasing here, which implies ignorance or ineptitude. I think the reason contracts aren't readable to laypeople is because laypeople aren't the intended audience. We all know no one reads these, so we write them to future lawyers and courts who might want to get our clients in trouble.…

Yeah. Law is weird and gets weirder when you scrutinize it as far as it can be scrutinized, which often happens in court. Not contract law, but I've been in two years of FOIA litigation to resolve a legal interpretation of "would" vs "could", and how that applies to a comma-separated list of categories. It's beyond maddening how long legal interpretation issues can go on for. It sucks, but sometimes the verbosity is…

Considering that two years ago the Supreme Court ended up having to hold that the use of the indefinite article "a" in the phrase "a notice to appear" means a singular document that fits the definition of said notice instead of multiple notices sent piecemeal, even clear legal language can somehow wind up being challenged all the way to the top. The opinion, which actually makes for some delightful grammar shade from Gorsuch to Kavanaugh that's both utterly thorough and gratuitous at the same time, is quite the read, although the Supreme Court having to definitively state that "a means a" is almost a parody of itself. I wish you the best of luck with a word that's 5 times longer and features a slightly more complex definition than the meaning of "a".

The opinion, btw: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-438_j4el.pdf

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#206

Post by ErikVandeWater »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience", this monstrosity was a recent Texas constitutional ballot proposal, i.e. all voters in the state were asked to vote on it: > The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school pu…

To be fair, the laypeople are also likely bombarded with advertising about the ballot measure. The advertising will simplify what's stated, and get at some potential consequences of voting yes vs. voting no. There could actually be a benefit with this language in that uninformed voters will actually not vote on it, whereas generally speaking, people vote with complete disregard to their level of knowledge about a subject.

Also to be fair, even if the language was perfectly easy to understand, there's probably at best a 70-30 shot the voters pick the right choice, since people lack the critical thinking skills, and education in public policy and economics to choose what's best.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#207

Post by mannykannot »

dctoedt wrote: post #198
rayiner wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true in general. There was a lot of disagreement over the scope of things like the Commerce Clause, Necessary and Proper Clause, etc. I don’t think that’s true of the Second Amendment specifically. It was written by a bunch of men who had just used guns they had lying around their farms to form militias and overthrow their government. I don’t think it’s a great mystery what they meant when they wrote the Secon…

> a bunch of men who had just used guns they had lying around their farms to form militias and overthrow their government. That pretty seriously overstates the case: The American Revolution started out that way, but as time went on, the Continental Army acquired serious artillery and became reasonably professional — thanks largely to Henry Knox; Baron von Steuben; and the Marquis de La Fayette — and the decisive fact…

This is true, but as you say, the revolution started out the way rayiner describes it, and it seems very plausible that the 2nd. amendment was motivated by that specific circumstance.

Personally, I think we would have been better off without the 2nd amendment, and the framers of the constitution may not have foreseen the role it has come to play in politics (if so, it would be far from the only case), but I cannot find much ambiguity in it.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#208

Post by DennisP »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #206
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #48

For everyone commenting "laypeople aren't the intended audience", this monstrosity was a recent Texas constitutional ballot proposal, i.e. all voters in the state were asked to vote on it: > The constitutional amendment authorizing the legislature to provide for the reduction of the amount of a limitation on the total amount of ad valorem taxes that may be imposed for general elementary and secondary public school pu…

To be fair, the laypeople are also likely bombarded with advertising about the ballot measure. The advertising will simplify what's stated, and get at some potential consequences of voting yes vs. voting no. There could actually be a benefit with this language in that uninformed voters will actually not vote on it, whereas generally speaking, people vote with complete disregard to their level of knowledge about a sub…

But there's no guarantee that advertising won't be misleading.

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#209

Post by cwillu »

Panzer04 wrote: post #192
cwillu wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal peave is “utilize”: it's just an excuse to use the letter “z” in a sentence.

If you're American, anyway :). Though default autocorrects are trying to globalise the Z over S anyway :(.

It's just an excuse to utilize four more letters.

‹twitches uncontrollably›

Re: Poor writing, not specialized concepts, drives difficulty with legal language

#210

Post by Spooky23 »

unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #176
dctoedt wrote: post #50

Lawyer and contract-drafting teacher here. The biggest problem with unreadable contracts is that we have too many L.O.A.D.s: Lazy Or Arrogant Drafters. (You can decide for yourself: L.O.A.D. of what?) There's a relevant Dilbert cartoon: [0] To simplify contract language, the biggest bang for the buck comes from SSSP: Short, Single-Subject Paragraphs, which are much easier to read; to review and revise during contract…

To extend this L.O.A.D. point, the worst, most unreadable contracts are drafted by nonlawyer paraprofessionals deputized by their organizations to patchwork previous contracts that may have been somewhat readable, into a Frankenstein mess. It's somewhat akin to assigning the office manager to write software code. Businesses do it because they think contracts should be simple so anyone can write them adequately. Those…

I worked in an organization like this and 100% agree. I compared it to COBOL in legacy systems.

One contract person (not attorney) had a library of categorized bullshit dating back to the late 1980s. The dude would paste them in like LEGO bricks. The guy retired like a decade ago and some of his stuff is still lurking in RFP templates.

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