Lawyer Lingo A User-Friendly Guide to Unfriendly Legalisms
The Pennsylvania Lawyer
A publication of the Pennsylvania Bar Association
July 2025
Abstract
In the course of human events, it has become evident that the language of lawyers, with or without some Latin thrown in, is unavoidable and, perhaps, incomprehensible. In everyday contracts, the paragraphs are long, the sentences go on almost forever and the words are ponderous. Have you seen a letter that begins, “Please find enclosed herein …”?
This commonplace deadening of our language occurs in our newspapers, magazines, televisions, radios and, lest we forget, the web. No longer do persons say or state something, instead they “indicate.” On the other hand, language, grammar, syntax, declensions, et al., inter alia, can be surprisingly engaging and entertaining. E.g., the Oxford comma. See Rebel with a Clause by Ellen Jovin.
