Description:

Anyone who hears the term ‘legal language’ thinks instantly of grammatically complex, infrequently punctuated, over-lexicalized, whole written text. Because the turning period for the textualizing of the law was during the period when the king and the aristocracy standardly spoke French, legal language still displays vital French influences. French was the language of the courts, though from very early on there were reductions to the fact that the language of the majority of the population was English.