"Byzantine" probably had more to do with the elaborate court ceremonial practices and regulations of the palace. This was most notably observed by Liutprand of Cremona, a 10th century emissary of the western "Holy Roman" emperor the eastern "Greek" emperor.

You can read his fascinating account here. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/liudprand1.asp

For Liutprand, all he saw were an endless line of rituals which had to be performed, and officials blocking his way who were sucking up to the emperor to be paid.

The volume and complexity of rituals (although there are arguments that what was recorded could not possibly have been followed because of its amount) and the number of officials and people of various titles involved was also recorded in the very extensive book "On Ceremonies," collated by the 10th century Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphryogenitus.

To a western audience, all of these rituals and leeches seemed very unnecessary to their more "manly" (i.e. lean) political system of military aristocrats. But of course, the reason for this was because the Byzantines were funded by a complex tax and administrative system inherited from Justinian's empire. They had the ability to fund a permanent bureaucratic class due to their robust state structure, something which really did not exist to that extent except in the contemporary Caliphate or China (which also suffer from the same orientalist notions from western viewers).

So long story short, were the laws and rituals really complex to contemporary western states? Yes. But only because in the deepest depth of the western "dark ages," Byzantium was the most advanced Christian state in Europe, so they needed that complexity to manage themselves.