Spoken English is not "bad writing" — it is a different system. Its features:
1. Spontaneity devices: false starts, self-correction, repetition ("It was — it was around Dashain, I think").
2. Fillers and hesitations:um, er, well, you know, like — natural in speech, fatal in writing.
3. Ellipsis: omission of understood words ("Been there?" — "Yes").
4. Phrasal verbs:put off (postpone), call off (cancel), look into (investigate) — speech prefers them; formal writing often prefers their Latinate twins (postpone, cancel, investigate).
5. Vague language:sort of, kind of, things like that — useful softeners in negotiation, dangerous in drafting.
6. Backchannels:mm, right, I see — listener signals with no place in a document.
7. Register control: the professional must shift register — friendly-formal with a client, strictly formal before a judge ("My Lord" — the honorific used in Nepali courts), relaxed at a bar event.
Exercise habit: record yourself explaining a legal point for two minutes; transcribe it; then rewrite it as formal prose. The differences you find are the syllabus of this section.