Actually, I think "cease" and "desist" mean two somewhat different things. To "cease" is to stop doing something that you were already doing, but you can "desist" from doing something even if you weren't already doing it. Right?
At any rate, this isn't a colloquial phrase but a legal one, and there are reasons to keep using it in a legal context. The main reason is that any lawyer using the phrase knows exactly how courts will interpret it. While a lawyer may feel that he knows how to say it better, there's no upside to being the lawyer who finds someday that a court came up with an unexpected interpretation that damages the lawyer's client.
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