[euroderf]

> It may also be surprising to some to understand that legal writing is prized for its degree of formalism. It aims to remove all connotation from a message so as to minimize misunderstanding, much like clean code.

> The more your argument is structured, akin to a computer program, the better.

You certainly make legal writing sound like a flavor of technical writing. Simplicity, clarity, structure. Is this an accurate comparison ?

[airstrike]

IANAL but have about a decade of experience negotiating contracts in M&A, and I think the comparison is very apt for that particular context, at a minimum. Maybe more so than other parts of Law where there can be an element of persuasion to any given argument.

[mistrial9]

recently I read a US law trade magazine article on a particular term used in US Federal employment law.. the article was about 12 pages long.. by the second page, they were using circular references, and switching between two phrases that used the same words but had different word order, contexts and therefore meanings, without clearly saying when they switched. By the third or fourth page I was done with that exercise. As a coder and reader of English literature, there was no question at all that the terms where being "churned" as a sleight of hand, directly in writing. One theory about a reason that they did that in an article that claimed to explain the terms, was to setup confusion and misdirection as it is actually practiced in law involving unskilled laymen, and then "solving" the problems by the end of the article.

[thehoneybadger]

Yes, that is an accurate comparison.

[ChainOfFools]

it is called a legal code after all

[kergonath]

“Code” in that sense predates pretty much any form of computer or technical writing. It came from the same word in old French in the 14th century, which itself came from the Latin codex. It basically meant “book”. Now of course it is specific to books that contain laws.

[Suppafly]

>“Code” in that sense predates pretty much any form of computer or technical writing.

That's still cognate with the concept of computer code.