A lot of “legalese” is lawyers exhausting synonyms for words in their documents. This is, in part, because some lawsuits have been decided on the use of a particular word choice instead of a synonym.
When I was in law school, I was taught 2 ways to combat bloat:
1) use the words used in the relevant statutes.
2) when writing a legal document, include a section of definitions for any specific terminology.
Wills & Estate Prof. Stanley Johannsen illustrated the problem by handing out a 25 page document to the class, and asked us to start reading it. He called us to stop after about 5 minutes. He then asked us to look at the last page. It was about 3 paragraphs of text that didn’t quite fill the sheet. This, he said, was what he had reduced the previous 24 pages to with careful drafting.
(He then threatened to eternally haunt anyone who drafted docs like the bulk of the pages as opposed to the last one.)
Another part of that verbose drafting style is trapping your opponents by the sheer amount of language used, hoping they’ll miss some key clause. Again, the UT profs hated that mindset. They generally taught that your documents should be drafted clearly and succinctly in order to PREVENT litigation and needless delays. Clarity lets everyone know their obligations and diminishes disruption. If you wind up in court, your documents were probably flawed.
