(non-native speaker)
Is there a reason why the English language has “special” words for a specific topic, like related to court (plaintiff, defendant, warrant, litigation), elections/voting (snap election, casting a ballot)?
And in other cases seems lazy, like firefighter, firetruck, homelessness (my favorite), mother-in-law, newspaper.
Most often the “fancier” words are loanwords from other language. Plaintiff/Defendant are from the French “pleintif/defendant”, litigation is from Latin. Firefighter, firetruck, and other compound words were created relatively recently compared to the others. Firefighters, firetrucks and newspapers mostly didn’t exist until after English mixed with other languages.
A lot of them haven’t changed much in the last few centuries either. Law is a pretty arcane thing. I also suspect they don’t want most people to understand it too well. If the legal system is a confusing, overcomplicated, bureaucratic nightmare, then the lawyers will always have job security and charge stupidly high rates for their work.