Template:Boilerplate capsule: Difference between revisions

But our dark secret: much of what we do, to get to those subliminal moments of rarefied artistry, we do on autopilot. To win ''Le Mans'', first keep the engine tuned, the tank filled and the tyres pumped up. ''Then'' drive like Stirling Moss.   

[[boilerplate|Boilerplate]] is the spark-plugs and fan belts of legal machine: workaday engineering that makes stuff go. What we want from it is ''reliability''. while it cannot ''win'' us the race, it can help stop us ''losing'' it, by working dependably without breaking down.   

“Working” means “going in easily” — without argument — and “being commonly understood”; at the limit, being able to withstand scrutiny before the [[Queen’s Bench Division]].   

Curiously, that quality is not intrinsic to the boilerplate itself, but is a function of ''what the community thinks it means''. There is an [[emergent]] strength in consensus: if everyone uses it, it is more effective, by itself, regardless of the cleverness of its engineering. Law is a sociological phenomenon, first and foremost.   

We should therefore regard boilerplate as a ''public resource''. A utility. We should not [[Rent extraction|extract rent]] from it. We should not regard it as special. Lawyers don’t help anyone, or nourish their own souls, by acing boilerplate.  

 

So, folks, let it go. ''Set your boilerplate free''.