There is a common thread of problems with legal systems similar to ours running throughout history.
About the new 439 AD code of the Roman Emperor Theodosius, the Cambridge Medieval History, Vol.II, states: "The Emperor boasting that the code would banish a cloud of dusty volumes and disperse the legal darkness which drove people to consult lawyers."
About the 533 AD code of the Roman Emperor Justinian, it states: "It gave the Roman world within a short time a practical statement of the law in use, cleared of what was obsolete and disputable, full in detail, terse in expression, familiar in language and of unquestionable and exclusive authority."
Moving ahead to the Napoleonic code of 1804, The French Revolution and Napoleon: An Eyewitness History, states: "Based on Roman principles and germanic laws, it achieved the civic achievements of the Revolution, in particular equality before the law. It was also adopted in northern Italy, Holland and some German states occupied by France, and influenced legislation all over Europe throughout the century."
Although all drawing heavily from the past, these codes were essentially new legal systems which were installed such that on a particular day, the old system was out and the new system in; with many of these new systems administering to a wider variety of cultures and languages than we have in Florida today.
At the same time one must appreciate the technology of the day. These codes were assembled (In the case of the Justinian code, 3,000,000 lines of former laws were reduced to a total of 150,000 lines of new laws) with scratchy quill pens or the equivalent and then "printed" (with the exception of the Napoleonic code) for distribution with more scratchy quill pens and then communicated to the far reaches of the empire by foot or horseback.
Thus the message of history is that many past peoples have aspired to and in some cases apparently achieved through the work and dedication of the scholars of the day, many of the characteristics of a legal system we aspire to but fall far short of having today even though today's technology makes the generation and distribution of such a code vastly easier and more flexible.