On Bad Legal Writing

Z, K., Law Student.

I, Kevin Z, a law student, am writing this statement at 12:30pm on the fourteenth of October 2004. Did I mention that I’m sitting on my behind? Well, to ease your mind, you ought to know that I am indeed sitting on said body part, hitherto referred to as “behind,” and hereinafter referred to as “ass.” This bit about said ass will prove relevant later.

It is the wish of said law student, hereinbefore identified as Kevin Z and hereinafter referred to as KZ, to express his condemnation on all of the pretentious windbag appellate judges, supreme court judges, and state and federal legislatures who write their needlessly long opinions and hopelessly confusing statutes with ludicrously repetitive and self-referential signposting language, and with such a jumble of ponderous legal jargon therein that renders said opinions and statutes, so described as “needlessly long,” utterly indecipherable even to those well accustomed to reading the English language. That said law student KZ should object to this painful prose should come as no surprise to the said judges and lawmakers, hereinbefore described as “pretentious windbags” and hereinafter referred to as “time-wasting, English language butchering, hide-and-go-seeking-with-the-legal-issues assholes.” It does not matter to said law student KZ that you time-wasting, English language butchering, hide-and-go-seeking-with-the-legal-issues assholes wrote much of the offending reading material during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The said KZ has read plenty of good prose by individuals far less educated than yourselves who wrote clear, engaging, legible prose dating as early as the beginning of the so described 19th century. Their mastery of the English language is still enjoyed not by some, but by the insurmountable multitude of many today, in the hereinbefore unmentioned twenty-first century.

Those who might object to this address, dismissing it as a mere litany of ignorance, hereinafter referred to as “respondents,” entirely miss the point of statutes and precedential opinions. Said statutes and precedential opinions should not be treated as a mysterious coded language that only those in the legal profession have any business reading. No, said statutes and precedential opinions ought to be written in clear, efficient prose which conveys meaning so that they actually resemble the hereinbefore mentioned English language. That lay people ought to be given the opportunity to become better informed on said statutes and precedential opinions is an undeniable entitlement that said time-wasting, English language butchering, hide-and-go-seeking-with-the-legal-issues assholes ought to have respected in the past, and ought to respect in the present and the future. The respondee, hitherto described as KZ, does not appreciate having to spend twenty minutes reading a single page. Said respondee cannot believe that there has been a handful of judges and lawmakers in certain jurisdictions who have written clumsy opinions and statutes employing the hereinbefore described ponderous prose well into the 1950s. But respondee has over two years left of law school, so he may well eventually discover other opinions and statutes written in the manner so described that date even later than the previously mentioned date above.

Respondee compels said time-wasting, English language butchering, hide-and-go-seeking-with-the-legal-issues assholes and respondents alike to kiss the said ass of KZ. The above mentioned act should not be very difficult, as the hereinbefore mentioned judges, lawmakers, and their supporting respondents (and other parties contained therein) have either been expressly or impliedly proven to meet the requirement of being assholes. They know the manner of the said act, and they know which way to go.

It is so ordered.