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Lawyers Never See Phrases They Can’t Puff Up
By Schaefer Kendrick

The bottom rung on the lawyers’ ladder of affection for acronyms is KISS – Keep it Simple, Stupid. The top rung in MILC (pronounced MILK) – Make It Long and Complicated.

When you die you want to leave everything you own to your wife. When the yeast of the lawyers’ lingo completes its work, the simple statement, “I leave everything I own to my wife” is puffed up to this: “I give, devise and bequeath all of my estate, real, personal and mixed, of whatsoever nature and kind, and wheresoever situate, of which I may die seized and possessed, unto my beloved wife, to be hers absolutely in fee simple.”

The lawyer doesn’t trust the word “leave” so it becomes, “….give, devise and bequeath.” He doesn’t trust “everything I own,” so it becomes, “…all of my estate, real, personal and mixed, of whatsoever nature and kind, and wheresoever situate, of which I may die seized and possessed.”

“…to be hers absolutely in fee simple” is a fee enhancer since it will require a professional explanation of “fee simple.”

Lawyers, it seems, are incapable of finding a contract in their form books that does not contain the phrase, “including but not limited to.” Their fascination for this phrase is an abiding mystery.

Verbosity is the result of the lawyers’ distrust of words. Insurance policies became so clogged with words, qualifying phrases, exceptions and conditions, a majority of lawyers are rendered illiterate by these specialized contracts. This deplorable situation caused the New York legislature to pass a language Magna Carta that requires insurance policies to be written in plain English. Ironically, the ones who will implement this statute are the same ones who were the cause of it being passed in the first place.

All contracts, of course, are fee bearing trees, and the thing that shakes out the fruit is the pendulum on the lawyers’ time keeping clock. The more ticks, the more fruit. This generates a parade of redundancies that would make old P. T. Barnum turn green with envy.

The drum major of this cavalcade of words is “whereas.” Then comes (including but not limited to) “notwithstanding,” “aforesaid,” “hereinafter,” “hereinabove,” “by and between,” “in hand paid,” “hereby,” “hereto,” “subject to,” “hereof,” “wherein” – this colorful parade of banalities goes on and one, as does the clock and its fee generating ticks.

It is a beneficent Jehovah who led King David to shun law school. Had he been successful in passing the LSAT, made Phi Beta Kappa and the Law Review, that magnificent 121st Psalm, in its opening proclamation, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from The Lord, which made heaven and earth,” would have been buried under an avalanche of legalese, and would have come out something like this:

“I will lift up and elevate my gaze, my view, my optic perception unto (including but not limited to) the hills, ridges, knolls, mountains, and all other earthly convolutions that make up the topography, from whence cometh (including but not limited to ) A) my help, B) my sustenance, C) my food, D) my clothing, E) my raiment, and all other material that covers my body to keep it warm and protect it from the elements. My help does not come from those things enumerated hereinabove from A) through E), both inclusive. No, my help does not come from one or any combination of these things so enumerated, but my help comes from Yahweh, a/k/a Jehovah, a/k/a God.”

Each day, I thank the kind Heavenly Father that Jesus was not a lawyer. I hate to think how the Lord’s Prayer would have fared, and how many volumes the Sermon on the Mount would have filled had he been a member of the Jerusalem Bar.

We lawyers don’t KISS, we MILC.

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