Mrs C. wrote:Why can`t legal things be written in plain English in the first place?? Or is it so you have to pay someone to "translate" them for you?
There is currently (well, it's 10 years old) a campaign for plain English within the legal profession and one is seeing a definite improvement. (As an example, one industry standard 30 plus line single sentence has been cut to about 15 words.)
I think that the worst I ever came across was a 5 line clause in a contract relating to the Forties Oil Field in the North Sea. It took me all Saturday and most of Sunday to work out the meaning and all the ramifications of that one clause.
The problem is that the wording must be incapable of any alternative meaning or interpretation. We once had a Spanish school teacher staying with us to learn English; the school gave her a simple sentence in English with the task of working out as many meanings as possible. From say 15 words we got nearly that many meanings which illustrates the difficulty of concise construction.
On top of that the entire agreement must be totally complete (though English law can excuse a few omissions in certain situations). As a result my basic agreement for one type of transaction ran to 57 sides of A4 paper, Arial 12.
Oh, and yes, lawyers do make a good living out of mumbo jumbo! One friend from the trade has 6 foreign holidays a year - this year it has been Alaska, Venezuela, I think Cuba and I don't know where so far.
