text: what (legal) basis gives lawyers the ability to re-use legal contracts originally written by others? by all accounts that i've heard, lawyers (and others) routinely create new contracts based largely upon existing contracts they've come across in one way or another.  if a novelist did the same (using others' novels) it would be copyright infringement.  i've been told that copyright does not apply to legal documents because they are primarily functional, and not aesthetic, and therefore not subject to copyright.  sounds logical enough, but i'd like something a bit firmer than that - a web page or case law or something that spells it out. i think this is a really excellent question and i'm linking to a law review article on this topic (the link is to a .pdf so be sure you have acrobat installed before you click).  i do remember that in the enron case, where enron's lawyers were filing 200-page pleadings, they actually put a copyright notice on the pleadings!