During my visit to the biennial conference of the Legal Writing Institute, I saw that although their focus remains litigation writing, an increasing number of their members teach contract drafting, or would like to.
I was also reminded that the Association of American Law Schools has a Section on Transactional Law and Skills.
So if an organization serves to promote the teaching of contract drafting, what specifically should it offer? The following came to mind:
- A forum for networking.
- A forum for learning, through conferences and publications.
- A way to pool the community’s bargaining power for purposes of promoting the subject when dealing with law schools and the American Bar Association.
But there’s also the Emory transactional conference, which happens every other year. A conference would offer some of the above benefits. To the extent that a conference is unable to offer other benefits, are those benefits significant enough to warrant expending the energy required to maintain an organization?
And if so, which organization would be best placed to promote the teaching of contract drafting? One of the existing organizations, or some organization yet to be created?
That’s just from the U.S. perspective. What about internationally?
As you can see, I mostly have questions. That’s because my energies are best focused on developing materials for teaching contract drafting. I leave to others the task of establishing, or strengthening, an organization to promote contract drafting.
But I can imagine working closely with any such organization. For example, if and when I get around to creating an online set of materials for teaching contract drafting (something I discuss in this post), I could imagine working closely with some organization or other.
