Why legalese sounds so complicated

Just as the statements use special rhymes and archaic terms to denote power, the lawyers’ muddled language conveys a sense of authority, they say. For their research, Edward Gibson’s team had more than 200 non-lawyers from across the U.S. write official laws that prohibit crimes such as drunk driving, burglary, arson and drug trafficking. They were also asked to write unofficial descriptions of the laws.

Embedding in sentences
The result: When writing, participants tried to use typical legal language. “People seem to understand that there’s an implicit rule that this is how laws should sound, and they write them that way,” Gibson said. For example, there were typical embeddings in the middle of sentences. In the unofficial description, however, this was omitted — even though participants had to add certain things to their text afterward.

In an earlier analysis, a team led by the cognitive scientist also showed that legal documents often have long definitions in the middle of sentences. This can make understanding the text significantly more difficult. “Legal language has somehow evolved a tendency to incorporate structures within other structures in a way that is not typical of human languages.”

Simplified rewriting possible
The researchers say they want to motivate legislators to formulate matters more understandably in the future. Ultimately, they are convinced that laws can be rewritten in a simplified style without losing or distorting the legal content.