It isn't so much that legalese is a separate language with its own subtleties; it is just that it is language with predictable effects in courts. Think of contract language as code, except the only time you get to run it through a debugger is when someone sues. Only then do you get to find out whether your code runs as intended, i.e. whether a judge interprets it to have the effect you intended. Once language is proven to have a certain effect, lawyers like to re-use that language in the sometimes naive belief that it will always be given that meaning. The tradeoff here is that the language can be difficult for laypeople to understand, especially as usages change. Some of the most notorious legalisms are redundancies, like "free and clear," that according to some scholars date back to the Norman conquest, when contracts were written simultaneously in two languages (free being Germanic, clear being Latinate).
There is another comparison here: recall how Joel Spolsky criticized the Netscape team for throwing out their old code and starting over? Lawyers can make the exact same criticism about people who want to disregard legalese.
I like your comparison! But justice should protect us, while everything here has no bound checks... Instead of having it in a high level language, we have some old cobol (it works!) here and we must pay specialists for $$ to decipher it...
There is a burgeoning "agile" movement amongst some (albeit very few) lawyers to improve things.
I wrote this rant about it a while back about how lawyers really should learn a bit from the agile movement that has so revolutionized the startup world:
Under 25 CFR §1.4(b), the Secretary of the Interior may in specific cases or in specific geographic areas, adopt or make applicable to off-reservation Indian lands all or any part of such laws, ordinances, codes, resolutions, rules or other regulations of the State and political subdivisions in which the land is located as the Secretary shall determine to be in the best interest of the Indian owner or owners in achieving the highest and best use of such property.
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Section 1.4(b) of 25 CFR allows us to make State or local laws or regulations apply to your off-reservation lands. We will do this only if we find that it will help you to achieve the highest and best use of your lands.
If the point of the legalese is to have a predictable effect in court based on a previous legal interpretation, how is it fair to expect me to "read, understand and agree to" the legalese when I don't have lawyerly training to have studied all the relevant previous interpretations I am agreeing to?
There is another comparison here: recall how Joel Spolsky criticized the Netscape team for throwing out their old code and starting over? Lawyers can make the exact same criticism about people who want to disregard legalese.
(I should really start blogging about this).