Corporatespeak vs Legalese

While I am not the proudest of it, I do come from a corporate background, specifically large law firms. I told myself at the time that someone was going to do this job, regardless of my convictions. It may as well be someone who wants to do it honestly and with a conscience. Indeed, this was kind of the starting point for Nonya, Bietz & Waxxe LLP, which has certainly been interesting to write.

But, in this corporate law experience, I came across two distinct flavors of conversing with another person: corporatespeak and legalese. And, as my corporate experience draws to a close, I wanted to touch on the differences between these two dialects and how you can tell them apart in case you ever need to figure out what's really going on.

Pictured: Ah, the sterile corporate environment. How I don't miss it.

1: Precision and Clarity

Corpratespeak is the opposite of blunt. If you've ever heard a CEO talk about how layoffs are actually "strategic retreats for the betterment of the company" you know exactly what I'm talking about. Corporatespeak tasks itself with making the worst of things sound palatable. Technically, the point has been raised and communicated but it's been done in a manner that can be difficult to decipher. This level of contrivance is more or less omnipresent within corporatespeak.

Ambiguity invites dispute and litigation, so proper legalese is difficult to understand due to it leaning in the other direction. Lawyers are trained to be painstakingly precise with their language; saying exactly what they need to say and absolutely no more. In the context of a contract or other legal document, this can manifest in sentences that take up the space of a paragraph because each clause is crafted with a different set of circumstances in mind.

2: Assumptions

The façade of success and allegedly wanting what's best for everyone permeates corporatespeak to a fault. Even being fired can be reframed as "finding a better location for an employee to thrive." The company is never doing poorly, they're just "in a difficult strategic position compared to the rest of the industry." Challenging these base assumptions quickly leads to being flagged as a troublemaker and is "bad for longevity in your position."

While legalese can suffer from these assumptions, it is more likely that damning statements will be buried in detail rather than smoothed out for consumption. In addition, legalese presumes a level of education and familiarity with the source material and terms on display. Not comfortable with a slew of "heretofore"s and "aformentioned"s? Tough luck.

3: Audience

Corporatespeak is largely utilized in situations where the person being communicated to is outside the speaker's sphere of trust, such as a non-executive employee or the public at large. This is part of the justification for the lack of clarity and required assumptions we just covered.

Meanwhile, legalese is typically spoken within spheres of confidence as the recipient is likely another attorney or someone with legal training. Lawyers typically understand that everything they do is, to a degree, confidential, so there is a level of frankness that is found within trust.

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There's a whole host of other things about these two forms of speech, but I have to save some material for a part 2 sometime! In the meantime, see if you can figure out the difference when you come across these in the wild!