WATCHING the impeachment trial has made me realize 3 things about my profession: we love legalese, we’re too legalistic, and we don’t know when to stop talking.
Lawyers have a peculiar language. We use words that only lawyers (and no one else in the entire universe) understand. We are addicted to our wherefore’s, thereof’s and hereby’s. We would rather say inter alia instead of among others, and anent instead of about. And we have a tendency to make everything—even the simplest statement—sound complicated. Just read any Supreme Court decision and you’ll know what I mean. Or better yet, open your TV set, close your eyes, listen to the lawyers argue, and be reminded of the adage, “Whatever you are speaking so loudly, I cannot hear what you are saying.”
We not only love our legalese—we also love being legalistic. To paraphrase White’s Law Dictionary, we object on some ground like hearsay when our real purpose is to stop the truth “from creeping into the courtroom. “ We raise technicalities just to muddle the issues and obscure the merits of a case. And we deny everything to death.
"— Atty. Jose Manuel Diokno, The Legalese Disease and some unsolicited advice, February 13, 2012
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