| Your analogy is more wrong than right. It is right in the sense that ordering from a menu at a restaurant can be a kind of code, but it is really just a subset of the common language useable by anyone. If you don't understand what you will get when you order, don't order it, because it might be crap; ask them and they will tell you what it is, in whatever common language is used in that restaurant. A contract is a "meeting of minds", and the minds are the minds of the parties not the minds of lawyers and judges. If the parties can't understand it, it is not a contract, any more than the signature of an Alzheimer's patient is valid, and signing something not clear and plain is a bad idea. In the Anglo-Saxon/British-American/Western/Modern or whatever you want to call it system of law, we do not have specialized codes that require experts to be intermediaries between parties to a contract. Humanity has experimented with the specialized code / scribe / clerk way of doing law. Often when an advanced society does not have widespread literacy, there is a specialized class through which all legal actions must flow; but as the aphormism says, "the life of the law is in experience not logic", and however appealing to technical people those special codes and classes of experts might be, experience shows that the code / expert societies are replaced by the common language / accessible court system. Enough bullshit philosophy and history: here's some actually useful advice. Collect example, well and simply written contracts. Start from example contracts in the Nolo publications or books like "Legal Forms for Everyone" by Carl W. Battle (ISBN 978-1-58115-451-1). If you have business contacts who have done similar contracts, ask them for a copy that you can use as a template. After all, that is all the high-priced legal firms do. They have their collection of cribs of previous documents and they re-work and re-combine as needed. This is not to belittle the legal profession or suggest you don't need a lawyer. Simply because you can express something in simple clear language and both parties agree, does not mean it will hold up in court or that it is a good idea. |