Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. Or more generally: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence

English is so incredibly context sensitive at every level from word construction to paragraphs that words/sentences/paragraphs are meaningless on their own.

You'd need a meta language to describe what the contracts mean. Which is what legal language is trying to be. If software engineers were building it today they'd probably add type judgments to each word/sentence/paragraph to enforce the right interpretation, e.g.

    (: ((: (time flies) noun)
        (: like proposition)
        (: (an arrow) noun))
       sentence)

I don't think most people would find that a large improvement in legibility.