The Law Does Not Require Legalese — /dev/lawyer

People think legal writing sucks because it has to. All the terms they see hurt their eyes and fog their brains. But all the lawyers seem to do it. It must just have to be that way. To be precise. Enforceable. Respectable. Something.

Courts do follow legal rules for reading contract terms. There are a bunch of them. But the most important ones all say exactly the opposite. They say your language rules, not ours.

The most important concept for interpreting contracts is “plain meaning”, sometimes called “ordinary meaning”. “Plain” and “ordinary” mean what you think here. No surprises.

The words of a contract are to be understood in their ordinary and popular sense, rather than according to their strict legal meaning; unless used by the parties in a technical sense, or unless a special meaning is given to them by usage, in which case the latter must be followed.

Technical words are to be interpreted as usually understood by persons in the profession or business to which they relate, unless clearly used in a different sense.

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