According to the Canadian periodical The Lawyers Weekly, “In the world of contract drafting, Ken Adams is the guru.” He occupies a unique position in the field of contract drafting, in that he’s the only commentator to focus on the language of contracts—not what you express in a given contract provision, but how to express it in modern and effective contract language.
His book A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting (ABA 3d ed. 2013) is widely used throughout the legal profession. He gives seminars in the U.S., Canada, and internationally, and he acts as a consultant and expert witness.
As part of its “Legal Rebels” project, in 2009 the ABA Journal, the flagship magazine of the American Bar Association, named Ken one of fifty leading innovators in the legal profession. And in a 2011 opinion, the Delaware Court of Chancery, the foremost business-law court in the U.S., described A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting as “thought-provoking” and noted that “One can even share and in fact applaud Adams’ encouragement of clearer forms of contract drafting.”
The ABA Journal has included Ken’s blog in its 2012, 2010, and 2009 “Blawg 100”—its list of the hundred best law blogs.
Ken is also at the forefront of contract automation. He’s founder and president of Koncision Contract Automation, a developer of online document-assembly contract templates. Its first product is a confidentiality-agreement template.
From 2006 to 2012, Ken was a lecturer in law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he taught the school’s first course on contract drafting.
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1989, Ken practiced corporate law in New York and Geneva, Switzerland, with major U.S. law firms. To find out how he changed from being a practicing lawyer to being an authority on contract language, see this February 2009 blog post.
For a copy of Ken’s resume, go here. To see his LinkedIn profile, go here.
