Why computer programmers should become lawyers
Our property class hasn’t covered a single case in a couple weeks. We spent the time pouring over some archane definitions of components of the estate system, trying to figure out what estates are created by a conveyance or a will, and did a whole series of practice problems. Some sample conveyances were apparently not written in the cleanest and the most unambiguous way. In a class setting they make students scratch their heads. In the real world they are the cause to much litigation.
An idea: all lawyers should learn to write computer programs. In case of dispute, just feed the program into a computer and see what the result is. This way, you still have a lot of flexibility and room for creativity, but know ahead of time who your judge is (the computer), how your program will be interpreted (the compiler), and can test your program ahead of time to make sure nothing is a miss (debugging).
So a typical conveyance would look like this:
Person A, B, C, D, E;
A.createTitle();
B.getTitle();
while (B.isAlive()){}
C.getTitle();
while (C.isAlive() && C.isMarried()) {}
if (!C.isAlive()) D.takeTitle();
else E.takeTitle();
But, on second thought, ambiguities and controversies keep many lawyers happily employed, so perhaps the status quo is OK.
