My friend group is about 60% lawyers, so I have a reasonable sense of what I'm talking about. I think a lot of software is also over-worded nonsense, and I try very hard to make sure I don't work in a place where that's encouraged. But the issue is that the law is the law and the over-worded nonsense is inescapable and very much encouraged. Now you can say only lawyers are allowed to say that, but a lot of lawyers will say that (in private anyway, not if you're paying them). A lot of the complexity comes down to the fact that its very hard to change the law. I understand your parallels with a piece of software, now imagine a piece of software built slowly over 100s of years by programmers with very divergent motivations, and which required massive amounts of consensus to make changes to. Oh and no automated testing or types or any mathematical correctness built in anywhere, which is actually the stuff that makes software elegant and powerful. That would be one truly horrific piece of software, and imo thats what legal code is.