Thu, 11 Sep 2008

Judge attacks 'bits of legal boilerplate, bolted together'

What the judge said:

The more I read the document, the more I think: 'A little learning is a dangerous thing'. It contains a number of malapropisms: they cause me to believe that the draftsman was not very familiar with patent practice and terminology. It conveys an impression that he was not always clear in his own mind about what he was doing and, when not clear, allowed his word processor to do his thinking for him. Bits of legal phraseology have been lifted from I know not what precedents and assembled in a strange way.

There are some errors that spell check can't correct. And no amount of grammar parsing would've caught this.

Idiots.

A court has attacked lawyers who let word processors do their thinking for them. Standard paragraphs are being bolted together to make nonsensical agreements, said a High Court

(link) [The Register]

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