Lawyers can’t write

Two months ago, the 2022 Ig Nobel Prizes were awarded and the one that caught my eye was the prize for literature. It was awarded for an analysis of what makes legal documents unnecessarily difficult to understand. It turns out, it is not specialist knowledge or jargon, but simply the inability of lawyers to write sentences in plain English.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe once quipped: “Mathematicians are like Frenchmen: whatever you say to them they translate into their own language and forthwith it is something entirely different.” He should have applied that to lawyers because that is what they do. Eric Martinez and his colleagues analysed English language legal contracts with a total volume of some 10 million words. Their analysis showed that when it comes to using sentences that are hard to understand, lawyers are far ahead of everybody else.

The chart below from their paper shows that more than 70% of sentences used in legal contracts are centre-embedded sentences (i.e. sentences with another sentence in the middle of it) that are hard to read. Even academic texts use this kind of complex sentence structure only 30% of the time. Similarly, legal texts are three times more likely to use passive sentences than academic texts and use a larger number of “big words” as evidenced by the low average word frequency.

Features of sentences used in different texts

Source: Martinez et al. (2022)

So, what can be done about it?

The researchers looked at how comprehension improved when legal texts were written in plain  English. Here is an example they used:

Legalese:

“THE FOLLOWING AGREEMENT, having been hereby agreed to be formed by Garfield’s Groceries (“Purchaser”) and Mikey’s Milkery (“Merchant”) on November 15, 2019, entails a sale of goods contract between the two parties. It is understood and mutually agreed by the parties that 10,000 units of chocolate milk, THE TEMPERATURE OF EACH SUCH UNIT NOT EXCEEDING 5 DEGREES CENTIGRADE upon arrival, will be tendered by Merchant to Purchaser on January 31, 2020. The parties furthermore assent to THE ADDITIONAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS, along with which the foregoing provisions form an exclusive expression of the parties’ desires, hereinafter set forth.”

Plain English:

“The following agreement is a sale of goods contract between Garfield’s Groceries (“Buyer”) and Mikey’s Milkery (“Merchant”). Both parties have agreed to form the agreement on November 15, 2019. The parties both understand and agree that Merchant will deliver 10,000 units of chocolate milk to Buyer on January 31, 2020. The temperature of each unit of chocolate milk will not exceed 5 degrees centigrade upon arrival. The parties also consent to the additional terms and conditions stated below. The above paragraph, along with the additional terms and conditions, forms an exclusive expression of the parties’ desires.”

The result of this simple restatement was that readers of the plain English version could remember 10% more than the readers of the legalese version, and the recall accuracy increased by one quarter. In other words, by not being able to write proper sentences, lawyers make it harder for us to understand and remember what is in contracts and increase the likelihood of us making mistakes – which in turn increases the likelihood that the same lawyers have to be hired to enforce contracts and impose penalties.