Tolerable length

Financial cosmology The JC’s guide to theoretical physics in the markets.™ →Go uptown Index: Click ᐅ to expand: Cosmology Lexophysics Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

A theory of lexophysics that there is a limit to the sheer syntactical heft that a given lawyer can be arsed to wade through before “taking a view”.

When you are confronted with standard terms for a settlement agent, for example, which stretches to 35 pages of nine-point serif font, there will be a point where the probative value of indulging the pantomime caring what the legal terms say is badly outweighed by its prejudicial effect on your sense of humour. This will arrive around page seventeen, on your thirteenth paragraph of denials of liability for things a customer would never, in an orderly universe accuse it of in the first place.

There is probably some mathematical relationship between ditch proximity and the prevailing attitude towards the tolerable length of a legal contract, but it is also skewed by age. As the JC gets ever crustier, his tolerance for the legal community’s stylistic flourish diminishes.