The quotidian is a utility, not an asset

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In which the curmudgeonly old sod puts the world to rights.
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Legal eagles love the idea that standard, boilerplate, tedious terms that make up the lion’s share of commercial legal discourse should be regarded some sort of secret sauce — a spell; magick; a differentiating factor, and not as the common utility they actually should be.

It is a common enough instinct. Everyone — not just lawyers, come to think of it — likes to believe herself special, privy to something critical; dangerous; delicate — information that, should it fall into the wrong hands, may wreak great ill upon its owner or the poor unsuspecting random. If we were to see the standard facilitating text by which our clients tether their fortunes to each other not as magic but as a free public resource this would not put battalions of legal eagles out of work; which seems to be their operating assumption. It would allow them to concentrate on valuable work.

See also