Traditional legal language

To put "plain legal language" into context, we should contrast it with some examples of "traditional" legal drafting. I will take the examples from the area of property law, because that is the area I know best; but you can find similar examples in any area of law. We will see that the examples illustrate two main features - verbosity and undue technicality. Most also ooze archaic language, illogical word order, complex grammatical structures, and sentences of excruciating length. I will take examples from both private legal documents and statutes.

Private legal documents

Leases are a prime example of all that is bad in traditional legal drafting. Suppose you want to impose on a tenant the obligation to repair the leased premises. You could write: "The tenant shall repair the premises" (or, preferably, "The tenant must repair the premises"). There is no doubt that, legally, this would suffice. "The premises" would be defined elsewhere in the lease. There would be no need list the various parts of the premises, because the term "the premises" would include all parts of the premises. And there would be no need to expand on the term "repair", as it is an ordinary English word, whose meaning when used in leases has been elucidated by many judicial decisions. Yet compare that wording - "The tenant must repair the premises" - with the verbal excesses that appeared in the "repairing" covenant which gave rise to litigation in the English case of Ravenseft Properties Ltd v Davstone (Holdings) Ltd:¹