[dsfyu404ed]

>If you can't understand a contract you're signing, you aren't really signing it.

The problem isn't that people don't understand things. The problem is that they think they understand them only to find out that a ton of key words they thought they understood are actually pointers to specific legal concepts (which themselves may have pointers and so on) within the niche area of law the contract covers and they are blindsided by this to their detriment when there is a disagreement over whether the terms are satisfied.

This is particularly insidious (because of the preexisting power imbalance) when the legal matter is not contracts but state and local civil code and ordinance. People think they're complying with the law but they're really not and it gives the government power of arbitrary enforcement (which leads to abuse and corruption).

[someguydave]

1. Lawyers are licensed by the state to work in the interest of the public

2. They (along with lawyers like judges and legislators) create a guild with its own language which has the side-effect of empowering knowing lawyers over a reasonably literate layman

3. The public is now required to "ask a lawyer before doing anything" for "their safety"

[CPLX]

Is it “insidious” when only software developers fully understand edge cases and complicated dependencies? Or is that just how software works? Isn’t software by definition just a collection of many relatively simple rules and procedures?

Sometimes complicated systems are complicated. It’s true that lawyers can have a knack for overthinking things sometimes but fundamentally these concepts are difficult and people’s rights and responsibilities and obligations and agreements overlap in complicated ways that often just don’t lend themselves to anything but sophisticated analysis.