American bacon drafting
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The JC’s guide to writing nice.™
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American bacon drafting
/əˈmɛrɪkən ˈbeɪkən ˈdrɑːftɪŋ/ (n.)
The legal equivalent of slapstick comedy: legal drafting created not so much to do anything but to be something. So named not because of necessary provenance from American legal eagles — though they do tend to be good at it — but because it resembles, by metaphor, the sort of so-called “bacon” they sell you in America. Any foreigner will recall the cycle of disappointment and grief they felt atr their first Breakfast In America when they watched local bacon cook for the first time.
American bacon drafting lives in the sort of wording that makes an incoming contract look hefty — even fearsome — but which, upon first contact with the pan, dissolves to a disappointing shrunken husk swimming in a sea of tepid grease.
I mean no disrespect to my American friends: only your bacon.