Legalspeak - A Rant

A friend of mine recently asked me to direct any "Funny Legal Notices" to them, for their preparation of an article, presumably addressing the ridiculous, self-aggrandizing nature of legal writing. At first, I wondered if I could uncover a missive emailed, by a colleague or fellow legal-conscript, in a moment of shared levity, on the extremes to which this industry goes to re-define it's sense of necessity.

Then my mouth emitted a watery "ribbit," as my tongue attempted to flit forward from my mouth. I blinked my eyes and thought, "Gee, it's warm in here."

From a financial eon ago, a banal memory mashed forward from the TV-laden morass, of standing in my apartment staring, blankly, at Citigroup Mastercard's legal notice in imperceptibly-sized print. Though written in English, the author's words read as though never meant for the then-present juxtaposition, with thriced-defined APRs, quadruple-assigned liabilities, and quintuple-conditioned fees. About as quick as you can utter,"Reply on defendant's motion for summary judgment, or in the alternative, compel and continue," another memory upended from the haze. This one, of a group of people laughing at the pretentious, impractical nature of the following legal notice, recently adopted by their company to attach to all outgoing emails.

The information in this e-mail, and any files transmitted with it, is intended for the exclusive use of the recipient(s) to which it is addressed and may contain confidential, proprietary or privileged information. If you are not an intended recipient, you have received this transmission in error and any use, review, dissemination, distribution, printing or copying of this information is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately of the erroneous transmission by reply e-mail, immediately delete this e-mail and all electronic copies of it from your system and destroy any hard copies of it that you may have made. Thank you.

That group's, recalled my own guffaw, initially ruminating the metaphysics of such a statement. The punchline: Who would author such a thing, and, in the name of all things, why bother?

But, don't ask me, now. I'll probably give some legal rationale on the necessity. Ribbit. Slurp-smack.