When I started my current project with Tom, I figured it'd be relatively straightforward to use software to extract information from legal text. Legal text tends to be well-structured, it tends to use very precise language, and it tends to be thoroughly correct. After all, vast sums of money can be on the line when someone makes a mistake drafting one of these documents.
"Contracts are just like programs!" I thought, my heart ablaze with naive faith in a would-be just world.
After poring over roughly one ream of legal text, I am ready to declare that this is not, in fact, the case. If contracts are programs, our lives are a vast compiler error.
I will now return to work on the app, begrudgingly teaching it to ignore parts of a ProgressLiving™ tenancy agreement, in which a drafting mistake results in a lease that grants special sublet and assignment permissions only to those who do not Juul. (I'm not kidding).
