Plain English - Why Not

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Some say that lawyers deliberately avoid writing clearly: legalese protects their privileged position, keeping non-specialists out, and bamboozling their customers into believing they need legal advice to progress the simplest commercial opportunities. It means you need lawyers to start the legal contract, and every time you need to change it.

But it's more complicated than that. True, some practitioners don’t use plain English because they can’t. But for most, legalese arises as an unwanted by product of advising and negotiating legal agreements.

For every lawyer likes to add value. She needs to, to justify that hefty fee. So looking at a draft and saying, “don’t sweat it, client, it’s fine” hardly passes muster.

See also

• anal paradox