Here’s Why it’s so Hard to Understand Legalese

A common question I get from the business-to-business service providers I work with is why is legalese so hard to understand?

When I first started this education platform, I used to say that it was all about the legal terms. Because let’s be honest: legalese is basically a foreign language.

And those legal terms can be extremely intimidating.

But now that I’ve been teaching the law to the solopreneurs and small business owners who want to learn how to do the law for themselves, I’ve arrived at a different answer.

The reason why legalese is so hard to understand, especially for non-lawyers, is because it was designed that way.

Wait, what?

Yes, you read that right. The answer to the question “why is it so hard to understand legalese” is that it was designed that way.

If you’re new here, then it probably makes sense for me to share a fact about myself: I study the history of business law. I figure if my goal is to teach the law of business to everyday entrepreneurs, then I need to spend some time understanding how we arrived at the current rules, customs, and practices that make up business law today.

So I slog through random business records at the library and read books about how the law developed to support capitalism.

I recently read about the history of The Crusades, which spanned the years 1025 to 1291. We know of this time as a period of Christian holy wars against Jews and Muslims.

But what I recently learned is that these wars were actually very much motivated by access to trade routes, meaning they were motivated by money.

And yes, I’m telling you this because it gets to the core of the reason of why it’s so hard to understand legalese.

Alright so here’s the deal: the Church in the West wanted access to goods from the East, which means it needed access to trade routes that were controlled by Eastern and non-Catholic regimes. It also wanted control of Holy Lands because it turns out pilgrimages to Holy Lands are kind of the original tourism bag. Lastly, they had this pesky issue of private knights forcing traveling merchants to pay tariffs to pass through certain lands, which interrupted trade, which interrupted how much money the Church made from taxes on that trade.

The Crusades presented a solution for all 3 problems. The Church could send the knights to capture lands in the East and by doing so, they could gain access to key trade routes and gain control of the Holy Lands to make a ton of money from tourism.

There was only one problem.

The Church needed money to fund these ventures.

So the Church, along with rich Lords and merchants, pooled their money to send ships and crews to the East to do their dirty work.

If you know how rich people operate as well as I think you do, then you know that all those rich people wanted to ensure that they received any potential returns on their investments. And that’s when the modern day contract was created.

Before this point, contracts were usually written by clergymen or the people who were party to the contract. But these contracts where rich folks pulled their capital to invest in a potential huge payoff required something more. The terms were more complicated because everybody wanted guarantees and security to protect their investments.

And because the terms were more complicated, the everyday person couldn’t write these contracts. A certain legal expertise was required. This is quite literally when lawyers as you know them today came onto the scene.

You know the ones. The ones who write contracts with dense legal terms and an endless list of contingencies.

These contracts didn’t just have a bunch of complicated contingencies, they were also written in Latin instead of the languages that everyone spoke at the time.

Keep reading because I’m about to tell you the worst part:

When less rich people wanted to invest in one of these ventures, they had to sign these contracts with the ultra rich folks, and guess what?

The lawyers wrote the contracts to protect the ultra rich person and not the less rich person who was probably betting their life savings on the venture.

Those contracts were written to get the less rich folks to sign away key rights that would support them in a lawsuit and to (grossly) undervalue whatever asset they were using to invest in the venture.

Don’t forget that the contracts were written in Latin, which is a language that the less rich person probably could not read or understand.

So how exactly is this related to the issue of why it’s so hard to understand legalese in today’s world?

Well, let me answer this question with a question: does any of the stuff I mentioned above sound familiar to you?

The contract being written in a language you don’t understand?

The terms of the contract requiring you, a solopreneur or small business owner working with a larger (richer) company, to sign away key rights that might be helpful in enforcing the contract if anything goes wrong?

The pressure you might feel to lower your prices to secure the business even though you know this large company has more than enough money to pay you in spades?

If so, then you might be starting to get why it’s so hard to understand legalese for the everyday person.

Because it’s been standard practice to write contracts that screw over the little guy, preferably without you noticing it, since around the year 1100.

And now that we’re in the 2020s, I’m sad to report not much has changed.

So if you’re a business owner and you provide services to larger companies who write contracts like this, then you need to assume that these contracts are screwing you over.

You need to accept that you’re the underdog in the situation.

And you need to know that nothing about this is personal to you. It’s just a standard practice that no one really thinks about. Not the company itself or the lawyers at the company who write the contracts or the person hiring you to perform services.

They’re all just following a protocol that was established over a thousand years ago and probably the only people who understand why are the lawyers.

So the reason why it’s so hard to understand legalese as an everyday person is kind of a depressing one: someone decided to make it hard on purpose over a thousand years ago and not enough people have really questioned that decision ever since.

But here’s the good news for you as a service provider business owner:

Unlike those poor blokes in 1100 who were trying to get in on the deal, you are the deal, friend.

That client wants to work with you. They chose you out of all of the other people in your field offering similar services.

That means you have a LOT more leverage than you think when it comes to the contracts your clients are sending you. And even though they can be hard to understand, I want you to know that with the right information, you can not only understand them, but negotiate them to be fairer.

Here at The Everyday Lawyer, my goal is to level the negotiation playing field between you and your clients. Because you deserve more than just money. You deserve better contracts.

And I’m here to help you get both. I’m here to help you get even.

If you’re ready to get started, then I invite you to read this article that outlines the basics for how to understand legalese or to watch this free workshop that outlines how to make sense of contracts.