[Loyolas Mattman]

What do you mean "legalese?"

Most of my work is very much in plain English, albeit through the use of (sometimes) carefully parsed words.

I'd dare say that your problem is more with legal reasoning and problem solving than with the language used.

Have you ever seen a pro se litigant in action? In my experience, they have extreme difficulty because they lack the ability to adequately analyze their issue from a legal perspective. In short, they don't think like lawyers. No knock against them - I don't think like a mechanic or an electrician.

It's not that they don't understand the jargon, it's that they don't know how to separate themselves from their problem on a personal level and how to look for and prove the elements necessary to advance their case. Just like I don't know how to "talk to" my pipes and find out why they are leaking...

Legal language has evolved out of necessity in response to the skill of lawyers to frame issues, apply language, and make distinctions.

[tumblindice]

I tell my clients: don't look at me, look at the judge. And don't lose your temper. Each time you do, well, there's a hundred bucks off your claim. Only the judge loses his temper in this room. Ya da ya da ya da.
So what do they do? They stare at me and lose their temper.

Ooops, I almost forgot, let me re-do the above.

With the utmost delecation and self-abasement, I admonish my constituent to view the arbiter, not moi. And I urge self-restraint, sine qua non, so as not to impinge upon possible emolument gratification, the res, ipso facto, enraging the arbiter amounts to res ipsa loquiter.

35 of the Founding Fathers, the largest group, were lawyers. They were concerned about `leveling', possibly because (then as well) good citizens were making noises about . . . . tossing them in the harbor.
There's nothing new under the sun. ;^)

[Rurudyne]

What do you mean "legalese?"

Actually, the majority of what lawyers do isn't in any way disreputable and what little there is that should be, should by now be considered essentially "atmospheric."

Of course I'm referring to things like the bait and switch, bits of jargon that seem to mean one thing in ordinary usage but mean something else in a court.

Please note what I proposed as a curative:

I did NOT propose dumbing down the language.

I DID propose educating people about the language.

The "Law of Unintended Consequences" aside, the only way to redress this issue (short of a State Supreme Court properly overruling the Federal supreme Court on an issue which the Federal has no proper standing and sticking to its guns) is to reduce the need for lawyers ... if only by reducing the need to have them to talk to OTHER lawyers. Education of the people could do that.

It'd be a LOT better use of our education dollar than so much of the trash we DO spend money on. Also, if there was some level of legal education in all schools then one might expect the following to also happen:

––some kids with an unknown talent for law might get interested in actually being lawyers.

––other kids who've assumed they want to be lawyers might learn they'd be happier doing something else.

––law schools might have an easier time finding good candidates and turning out better lawyers.

––and literacy rates should go up (or illiteracy at least become more apparent) ... hard to read about essential legal theory and the use of legal language when you can't READ. ^_^

Also, I would suggest that the legal language has only evolved so far because of the transformation in our Federal government that was accomplished through this lawless substitution on the part of some disillusioned 19th century legal types (when has disillusion EVER been a good reason to do anything?).