Free us hereinafter from the dead grip of legalese

It is high time that the legal industry got its own version of TCF. TCF, or Treat Customers Fairly, is legislation that originated in the UK and is being implemented in the South African financial services industry.

It is designed to protect consumers of financial products from some of the worst excesses of fee exploitation, mis-selling, commission gouging and confusion related to poor communication.

Banks and insurance companies are now forced to ensure that you understand what it is you are buying. The same should apply to the legal profession.

Most of us, thankfully, will encounter the legal fraternity on only a handful of occasions during our lifetimes: drawing up a prenuptial agreement, buying a house, writing a will or as executors of an estate. Even these fairly vanilla legal encounters, however, can be daunting to the lay person.

In more testing legal matters, we would be obliged to hire the scariest attack-dog lawyer we could find, but for the everyday stuff, lawyers need to be forced to speak a language we all understand.

Until recently, the legal fraternity was left to self-regulate - attorneys through the Law Society and advocates through the Bar Council. However, the adoption in September of the Legal Practice Act tightens the screws on an industry that, with its intimate knowledge of the chicanery of the system, has been able to take care of itself for decades.

Governments learnt to their cost in the aftermath of the financial crisis that the clever guys need to be watched. They have also learnt that getting any profession to regulate itself is akin to getting the Blood Suckers' Association of Transylvania to regulate vampires. Conflicts of interest are inevitable. The downside is more regulation and higher charges for consumers, but in this case it might help you understand what it is you are buying.

The new act puts more stringent requirements in place, obliging lawyers to disclose costs up front, and creates a new ombudsman function for consumer complaints. If the PR around the act is to be believed, it ushers in a "transparent, transformed, public-centred and responsive profession, with disciplinary bodies to adjudicate allegations of misconduct being made up of both lawyers and lay people".

That is fine, but you have to understand your interactions with the legal practitioner in the first place.

Legal documents are full of jargon, legalese and language designed to intimidate even the most robust private citizen into a jelly-like state of timid acquiescence. Legalese is the preserve of the legal elite and serves to exclude ordinary people from the legal process.

It is almost an act of revenge by a group of just under 30000 lawyers in South Africa who gave the best years of their youth to the tedium of consuming dull legal texts: "We suffered through our law degrees, so now we will take it out on you."

It is high time we understood the quagmire of what we are committing ourselves to every time we sign a legal document.

Most of the bumf we sign does not matter if the process goes well, but it can bite you if ever there is a dispute.

Think about the last time you bought a house and were presented with the raft of documents by your bank and the sellers' attorneys.

A property transfer nowadays requires upwards of half a tree of paper and a couple of dozen signatures and terminal initialling of pages to satisfy the requirements of the Deeds Office and the people lending you the money.

A single piece of paper left unsigned or a page not scribbled on by all parties can lead to interminable delays. Why? Well, that is just the way it works, the lawyers will tell you, it's all for your protection.

But what are you agreeing to?

Damned if I know.

Most of us would rather undergo root canal work than visit a lawyer. But if you have to, let me suggest a game. It is called "getting the lawyer to speak in plain language". It guarantees hours of fun. They will think you stupid, and once you fully understand exactly what it is you are signing, you may choose to not enter into the contract in the first place - but at least you will know why.

Ask them whether they are part of the new generation of law graduates spared the pain of learning Latin. When they reply with an affirmative but curt nod, ask them why their legal documents are littered with phrases they do not understand.

I am willing to bet herein, thereto and so forth, dolus eventualis, ad infinitum, fiat lux, ex unitate vires and nec aspera terrent that the person sitting opposite you could not explain it in plain English if their lives depended on it.

They will stare at you blankly as you wander out the door.

Whitfield is an award-winning writer and broadcaster who is a fan of plain language