The English Legal Documents

2. Graphological Features At the graphological level, the most striking feature is that the typing does not take the convenience of the reader into consideration, and which can be reflected in the following aspects: a) Rare use of punctuation marks. This is because the change or addition or omission of punctuations might change the meaning of the documents, and so it might as well do without them. When sometimes punctuation marks are used, the most frequently used ones are just the comma and the full stop, since the sentences used in legal documents are always statements. The second reason is that legal documents are not written for reading aloud, and therefore there is no need for pauses marked by punctuations.
Laws can be divided into two big branches: the private law and the public law. The private law is also called ‘civil law’ which determines a person’s legal rights and obligations in many kinds of activities that involve other people. The private law can be divided into six sub-branches. They are a) the contract and commercial law, b) the tort law, c) the property law, d) the inheritance law, e) the family law, and f) the corporation law.
The public law involves the government directly. It defines a person’s rights and obligations in relation to the government. The public law can also be divided into some sub-branches: a) the criminal law, b) the constitutional law, c) the administrative law, and d) the international law. Legal English always has some connection with the activities of the law courts in the statutes and regulations enacted by the government. It also has a close connection with the business of companies and the daily life of the people – contracts, insurance policies, hire-purchase agreements, house mortgages, leases of property, guarantees, etc., are all written in legal English.

b) Paragraphs are rather long, and some documents are written even in just one paragraph. Apart from these features, consistent use of initial capitalization is also noticeable in order to dignify the ‘owner’, or the ‘party’ or the important terms involved. 3. Lexical Features The most conspicuous lexical features of legal English may be explained as a) Archaic words, such as compound adverbs thereinafter (in the following part), hereinafter (in this document and after this point), hereof (of this, concerning this), hereby (by means; by means of this), thereof (of that) …
When a legal document is drawn up, the people connected will want to know exactly what rights and obligations are, and at the same time, they will be anxious to see that no other person can change it. If it comes to a dispute in a law court as to what the exact situation is, then everything has to be decided on the interpretation of the document. Hence, when documents are drawn up, extreme care has to be taken to be precise and unambiguous about the facts and the agreements concerning them, owing to the writers’ reliance on these established forms and their reluctance to change the well-tried modes of expressions.
The constant attempt to get these purposes has led to the development of a language of great complexity, therefore, the preference for old-fashioned language and the habit of clinging to words and expressions which were dropped out of use elsewhere. As a result, the writers of legal documents have to pay special attention to the precision of wording, and the avoidance of misunderstanding and ambiguity, and, accordingly, they often cite conventional formulas and use mode-expressions. At the same time, they should avoid personal feelings, opinions and judgments. Big and formal words, passive voice and long sentences are typical of legal English.
All in all, legal English concerns with the guarantee of people’s rights, the enforcement of their obligations, and the terms of punishment for the violation of the law and the evasion of their obligations. Legal English is most often presented in the written form, and it is probably the most archaic and formal of all the varieties of the language and it is certainly one of the most stylistically distinctive varieties of English. It is old fashioned because it draws upon a time-honored and well-tried tradition of usage which has evolved in the hands of lawyers, and which they know from experience does the job they want it to do – to state facts and agreements about them in an extremely precise way.