X-Digest-Num: 265
Message-ID: <44114.265.1438.959273825@eGroups.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 08:51:31 +0200 (CEST)
From: PILCH Hartmut <phm@a2e.de>
Subject: Re: Legal Lojban
X-Yahoo-Message-Num: 1438
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On Sun, 24 Oct 1999, xod wrote:

> It's legal, and it's also legal to write your own legal contracts (in the
> US) but you might be surprised what loopholes a lawyer might be able to
> find and exploit in such an amateur document. Law is arcane and illogical.

There are many documents where hiring a lawyer won't help much.  A lawyer 
will tend to screw up your document, putting a lot of abracadabra into it
and obscuring the contents.  Usually lawyers also tend to use bloated
syntax, freighted with lots of anti-loophole devices and full of syntactic
ambiguity.  

> I would pay a real lawyer to do it right, and if he screws up you have
> somebody to sue.

He will love nothing more than being sued.

I still think for a lot of documents an unambiguous source version can be
helpful.  You can then translate it into English or other languages and
ask lawyers for advice.  This may force them to clarify where the real
loopholes are and work out a good version with you, rather than just bloat
the text.

-phm