Do you need an outdated, non-specific legal language, username?

In the previous article, one very good question came up in the comments, from which it is not a sin to make a full-fledged article, talking about the usefulness or necessity of a legal language as such. Do not be lazy to reproduce this question completely:

Can you talk a little bit about legal language? Can you suggest an explanatory legal dictionary that contains a generally accepted set of definitions? Why the introduction of spetstermin not lead (for a layman) to reduce the documents? Is it possible to write documents without losing meaning without the use of special terms, according to Ozhegov, and how will the length of texts and the availability of a non-expert change?

I have to read, and in some places memorize, at a minimum: the Criminal Code with comments, military regulations, labor code, tax code, laws on consumer rights, laws on family and education, and a number of laws on social services (for example, to have the right not to go to radiology walking to the fourth floor with a broken leg and a sore heart). This is a huge and constantly changing array of information, and not always obvious and logical.

And indeed, since school we remember that ignorance of laws does not exempt from liability for violating them, therefore it would be better to know the law, to avoid, but it is usually difficult and boring to read it in a language that is difficult to read without skill.
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I must say: the question of language is my favorite question about everything. Approximately 30-40% of what they hire for me arises because people with great difficulty formulate what they have in their head, orally or in writing. The next level of this problem is the majority’s habit of speaking imprecisely or attracting borderline words if they look beautiful.

The question of the accessibility of the legal language concerns both the inhabitants and the lawyers themselves. We all - consumed the laws, just some of us got a set of special knowledge for this. Laws are written for everyone, and any law is not just a set of terms, but rules that need to be applied in specific life situations. And the state, since it is interested in the implementation of the law, should think about the clarity and clarity of legal texts.

But the fact is that the text does not reach the primary “consumers of laws” in the original source. We all know the law from an early age through the stories of parents, acquaintances, TV shows and comments in the media. Few people read the Criminal Code or the Civil Code in the latest edition, but the vast majority of citizens know the basics of law. We know that murder or theft are crimes, and are punishable by imprisonment, although we did not read art. 105 or 158 of the Criminal Code. Or we know that it is necessary to pay for transportation in the public auto-boom, although we haven’t seen the provisions of the Civil Code and the Road Transport Charter on the contract of carriage. Examples of legal norms that live life to the fullest, mass: receipt of receipt of money; take a receipt, then to prove that he paid; give power of attorney if you don’t want to go to court yourself, etc.

All this is superimposed on one another and gives us this very question: should I read the laws. And then one simple turn comes out: not that it should, but the trick is that it makes you think about the law, and not just listen to the popular text and wave it away, they say, I understood.

This is generally a great misfortune of our time - the categorical prevalence of form over content. Easy to read - will consume. We must think - we will be indignant why we need it.

So why is it so difficult in legal documents? Why do lawyers use terms that are difficult for a layman to understand?

Main reasons:
In any science there is a special language by which it describes the phenomena it studies. Jurisprudence is no exception.

The legal language has many functions. One of them - to achieve unity of terminology. In order for everyone to understand what he should and should not do, the language of a legal document must be precise and clear. Accuracy cannot be achieved without the use of concepts - terms that have a strictly defined content. Therefore, in the laws and use the terms, developed before the legal science, and in contracts, court decisions and all other documents in which the right lives, is implemented, these same concepts from the laws are used.

The use of stamps, stationery. Attempts to change or reduce such clichés may not simplify, but, on the contrary, complicate the perception of a document at all stages of its application and thereby tighten the document flow as a whole. Lawyers and other people accustomed to documents see familiar excerpts from laws in laws (turnovers or whole sentences) and read information from a document twice as fast as if the author of the document approached him more creatively. "In accordance with the current legislation of the Russian Federation" or "The opinion of the authors of this document, which you are reading right now, is based on a study of the latest edition of the laws of the Russian Federation." Yes, it sounds much more interesting, but much more verbose. In addition, here is an example of legal inaccuracy: “fresh edition” may be fresh, for example, but not valid when the law has not yet entered into force.

And the exact terms need to be understood. They can be unusual to read, but in the legal world, behind ALL is quite a large amount of concentrated content. Useful stuff

The construction of the document is also justified by logic and standards. For example, any written contract usually contains sections familiar to everyone: the introductory part (who concluded the contract), the subject matter of the contract (about which), the rights and obligations of the parties, responsibility, the grounds for alteration and termination, and other conditions. This is a familiar structure, and any business executive in an enterprise or an accountant is more accustomed to seeing the contract in this form than to look for the names of the signatories on the second page below, and see the subject of the agreement on the last page of the text.
In addition, it reduces the risks of unequal understanding of the same text. Plus it sometimes shortens the text. For example, if the judge in the decision writes “to recover 1000 rubles in favor of the claimant” or “to recover in favor of a citizen who applied for a resolution of the dispute about that to the court, 1000 rubles”. The judge in the decision uses the term "plaintiff", the content of which is specified in the Civil Procedure Code of the Russian Federation ", and there is no longer any need to disclose it. Therefore, it cannot be said that “the introduction of special terms does not lead to a reduction of documents”. Even as leads.

To be honest, I would have aggravated. The use of exact concepts is rapidly going out of fashion. Moreover, on social networks, we can observe how completely idiotic information, decorated in an attractive shell for the average person, regularly causes a lot of approval and avalanche-like distribution from the public. Jurisprudence today remains an interesting island of concrete conversation on complex topics, even if it takes effort to understand its language. And it seems to me sincerely that these efforts have their own value.

This is about how the joke, as the photographer decided to become a plastic surgeon and bought the most expensive scalpel. If you want to do something, study the laws about what you are climbing into. Yes, it can be more difficult than buying a tool that, as it may seem, will do everything on its own, but it will give you very useful knowledge and, which is not bad at all, will make you think about what you are planning to do, and clearly and with different sides.

Why think and delve? Then, that any ambiguity will have a bad effect on the application of the document and lead to a violation or uncertainty in the rights of a citizen or organization. After all, if it is not clear what exactly you should do, and what exactly you should do, how to fulfill it and how to make the other observe your rights? The jurisprudence should strive for clarity: in the expression “Execution cannot be pardoned” in clearly expressed cases, the comma should be put in one place by all law-enforcers.

There is also a more general task for a legal language: to achieve high definiteness of the text with maximum simplicity of expression. Compare: The term of the power of attorney is one year. The date of the power of attorney is 01.06.2016 ”and the Power of Attorney is valid until 01.06.2017”. In the first version, both the text is large and it is still not clear to the person, on what day of 2017 will his powers end?

Therefore, legal texts can and should be written in as simple a language as possible, bringing together commonly used and specially legal concepts, but it is impossible to do without special terms, as it is impossible to do in any branch of human knowledge. Yes, explaining to the working mechanism of the machine, the master can say: “Here, hit that squiggle, turn the joke and let that bandura fly out there”, but write instructions in such a language, designed for the “non-Evident” of what is happening, without using the names of the mechanisms and processes, so that all others understand how it works, he is unlikely to succeed.

Non-professionals interested in law can be recommended to read special adapted collections on various life areas: “everything for motorists”, “real estate transactions”, follow the aspen legislation news on TV and on the websites of legal reference systems. And for drawing up of competent legal documents to use the templates made by experts.

(c) Alina Tukhvatullina, Kirill Gotovtsev