Legalese is a technical language. As far as I’m concerned, it’s as close to plain English as SQL: close at first glance, but actully quite distinct.

I have a long-abiding interest in linguistics, and formal training in programming language theory. English legalese is my favorite pseudo-language. It's also the first pseudo-language I remember learning about, from my uncle. My uncle is a very accomplished attorney (up to the Supreme Court) and his comment was, to paraphrase: "legal texts are usually very clear once you understand them; it is the discovery of facts, and the application of the text to facts that are the domain of lawyers and judges".

In law school the mnemonic was "IRAC": Issues, Rules, Application, Conclusion. A lot of legal writing at least rhymes with that structure.

That's fair for law documents; in the same way I'd expect your peers to understand your SQL.

I just wish privacy policies, which are supposed to be for consumers, were written in the plain English.

It's just a dialect with some jargon. Still English, with all its chaos, at its core.

I've seen some miserable formatting in older contracts. I was doubling-checking the documents for a house sale a few years ago, and came across a sentence that was over half a page long without _any_ punctuation. Even though I have a law degree, it took me the best part of half an hour to be 100% confident of the intended meaning and that I hadn't overlooked something.