It Is as It Was (But Why?)
The Georgetown News-Graphic has this interesting piece (titled “Pleaseth updateth thy language”) about lawyers clinging to the past: using outmoded, cryptic language, going bonkers with caps, emulating Shakespeare, etc.
Here’s an excerpt:
In many ways, we have truly modernized. But in some, we still have an antiquated system. And in no area is this more evident than our persistence in using indecipherable language simply because it’s the way Thurgood Marshall did, the way Oliver Wendell Holmes did, the way John Marshall did, the way John Jay did. Those men were all great legal minds, but they were not supposed to have set (and continue) a template for our legal language for all eternity.
