Message
from the chief
Jargon
What is it about lawyers that makes them like jargon?
Perhaps a need for precision and accuracy in documents,
or maybe it’s a need to demonstrate that some issues are
so complex, the only way they will be properly understood
is by employing a lawyer to interpret. That way we keep
our jobs! More likely, though, it’s because of historical
convention, and the reality is that we sometimes don’t know
that we are using words that are only meaningful to other
lawyers.
One example of this is “costs”. Most
people would use that word as a verb
“That car costs more than this bike”.
Lawyers use it as a noun. “These are
my costs”. Most businesses, even when
using costs as a noun, are describing
the expense involved in providing the
item or service. “The costs of producing
the car have shot through the roof”.
Lawyers are using the term to describe
their fees, though they sometimes
preface the word with “legal” i.e “legal
costs” (or if particularly archaic, “profit
costs”). It isn’t easy to understand why
this has happened.
Some Wills and old Deeds can
contain obscure terms like “bequeath”,
“covenant”, “demise”, or if you go back a
long way, “fee simple”. These mean, in
the same order, “give”, “promise”, “land
granted by lease”, and “freehold” (which
means a type of ownership of land).
Some of this can be explained by virtue
of the fact that legal documents can be
around for a long time, and language
understandably changes in that time.
Some of it can only be explained by a
need for some lawyers to preserve their
perceived status as professionals.
Happily, some law firms, of which Mayo
Wynne Baxter is one, try their best to
avoid such obscure terms, preferring
instead to use Plain English and readily
understandable language in all of the
documents it creates. We just have to
live with the older documents crafted by
others.
Less happily, in this age of increased
emphasis on business promotion,
and particularly in view of my role,
most jargon that I now encounter
is “management speak” rather than
“solicitor speak”. I’m sure you will have
heard the terms I’m talking about.
Phrases such as “drill down”, “going
forward”, “leverage”, “thinking outside
the box”, “low hanging fruit”, “taking it
offline”, “conscious uncoupling”. I must
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