We live in a nation that simultaneously idolizes, fears, and holds contempt for members of the legal profession, depending upon how we and they are situated at any particular moment. One odd side effect of that relationship is a desire to imitate attorneys in an effort to make ourselves appear to be smarter.
You’ll see it when executives try to draft legal-style language or when ad writers try to pen their own small print. You’ll also see it when people borrow elements of contracts, such as that odd habit of spelling out numbers and then showing the numerical value in parentheses, which I notice thirty-one (31) times in the average day.