Evolution by natural selection

The greatest scientific achievement — or not science at all?

Well, I told you I was a contrarian, didn’t I?

Here’s how evolution actually works in a legal context. Lawyers are like genes. They are mindless replicating engines. It is what they do: they spawn. They combine to create contracts. The contracts have variations in them. Good contracts that are fit for a given purpose will replicate more easily than bad ones that are not.

but the purpose is not the one you think.

The contract, remember, is merely a vehicle for replicating its genes: it is not a replicator itself: it is a phenotype. The best kind of contract is one which will generate lots of little places for lawyers to secrete themselves away snuggle, feeding gently on the words of the contract, spewing out without limitations, for the avoidances of doubt, and chewing up and recycling the words to that no one else, other than another legal replicator, can understand it.

The contract is like a host.