The phrases “mere condition” and “mere covenant” (and the latter phrase’s more modern equivalent, “mere obligation”) occur quite often in caselaw, as well as in …
MSCD 16.29–31 deals with “rhetorical emphasis.” That’s the term I use to describe language you shovel into a contract provision to show that you really, …
Parsing redundancy in contract language can get old, because it comes in endless shape-shifting forms. But a fundamental and intriguing kind of redundancy involves conjunctions. …
In December 2007 I underwent a Damascene conversion and switched typefaces—for purposes of contracts and pretty much everything else—to Calibri, one of a new suite of …
David Munn, general counsel of contracts intelligence company Pramata Corporation and longtime friend of this blog, recently alerted me to some mystery contract language. Here’s …
The “Newsroom” feature of the University of Pennsylvania Law School’s website contains this item about the redrafting project my class worked on last semester—we redrafted …
Judges and commentators have long fulminated against and/or. One particularly irate judge—perhaps spittle-flecked, with neck veins bulging—referred to it as “that befuddling, nameless thing, that …
The recent Lawyers Weekly article that I linked to in a previous post contains the following: The phrase “sole and exclusive license,” for example, is …
An M&A-lawyer boogeyman is “double materiality,” which ostensibly arises when a materiality qualification is included in the bringdown condition to one party’s obligation to close, …
This article by Donalee Moulton in the current issue of the Canadian periodical The Lawyers Weekly considers what’s involved in making contracts clearer. Yours truly …
[Updated April 6, 2010: Another resource is this recent Law Technology News article on document assembly. Not that it says anything earthshattering.] The comments to last …
Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m committed to drafting contracts in standard English—English as spoken and written by the average educated native …
In addition to Ken’s posts from February 2013, this blog contains Ken’s posts from The Koncise Drafter (from December 2010 to February 2013) and from the AdamsDrafting blog (from May 2006 to December 2010).
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