Comprehension of Civil Law Contracts by Readers

The article is concerned with the comprehension of modern legal texts by native Russian speakers. Legal texts play a huge role in the modern world and are an integral part of the law and language culture of society. The relevance of the study is due to the increasing complexity of legal relations in modern society and the need for an accessible statement of legal norms for general readers. The subject of the study is the comprehension of the texts of civil contracts, such as a purchase-sale contract and a credit contract. The article presents an analysis of a survey of 60 informants, the purpose of which was to identify the level of their comprehension of the presented legal texts. The questionnaire included 8 questions for each text with four answer options. As a result, 960 reactions were obtained and analyzed. The study showed that, despite the presence of a significant number of correct answers (from 55% to 93.3% depending on the question), there is a significant proportion of informants who have difficulty comprehending the texts of civil contracts. The most difficult questions for informants were those related to the rights and obligations of the parties to the contract, especially those that do not seem obvious based on common beliefs. The easiest questions in both cases were questions about the time when the action with the main subject of the contract occurs. The study shows that the difficulty in perceiving legal documents is associated with the peculiarities of legal language and legal writing, as well as insufficient legal literacy of the population.