I sent a contact my first draft of an article about—what else!—dysfunctional mainstream contract language. In the modern way, my contact fed my draft to Claude, to see what Claude thought of it. They then forwarded to me what Claude had to say. One thing stuck out: Litigated language has known meaning; novel clearer language trades interpretive certainty for readability, … Read More
This week, The Volokh Conspiracy blog published my latest article, Comma Mischief from the Florida District Court of Appeal. The closing section explains that many judges are bad at textual interpretation. It ends with a rallying cry—the only fix would be to offer training to judges and their clerks, ideally from a center at a law school. The only way … Read More
In this blog post, I describe how Adams Contracts is in limbo. But some people are using Adams Contracts’ highly customizable templates! One of them is Katie Butler, managing attorney at Torch Law, a law firm based in Arkansas that offers “comprehensive legal support for data and technology” to clients in Arkansas and beyond. (That’s Katie in the accompanying photo.) … Read More
Where do things stand with my grand project to remake contract drafting? It’s in limbo. Thanks to A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting and the training I offer, there’s now a path to becoming an informed consumer of contract language. But that’s not enough: systemic dysfunction requires systemic change. Using highly customizable templates is the best option for systemic … Read More
Thanks to a tip from Glenn West, I heard of the decision of the Florida District Court of Appeal in Treasure Coast Classical Academy, Inc. v. Optima Foundation, Inc., No. 4D2025-1577, 2026 WL 2104076 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. July 22, 2026). Today, The Volokh Conspiracy published my article about it, Comma Mischief from the Florida District Court of Appeal. Because The … Read More
Friends, today is a special day, as I’m able to introduce to you a new kind of syntactic ambiguity. (As A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting says, “Syntactic ambiguity arises principally out of the order in which words and phrases appear and how they relate to each other grammatically.”) Well, this form of syntactic ambiguity is new to me, … Read More
As I mentioned in this blog post, I’ve been leafing through some textbooks intended for teaching contract drafting. One of them is Tina L. Stark & Monica L. Llorente, Drafting Contracts: How and Why Lawyers Do What They Do (3d ed 2024). I happened to notice two technical mistakes in that textbook relating to principles of English usage. I thought … Read More
I’ve just scheduled the next public Drafting Clearer Contracts presentation. It’s on 28 and 29 October 2026, from 11:00 a.m. to 2:10 p.m. ET. Go here for more information. I hope to see some of you there!
For an article I have to write in the next few days, I’ve been leafing through textbooks intended to be used in teaching contract drafting. I had contemplated doing reviews of one or more textbooks, but I decided I’d rather focus on how I’d approach teaching contract drafting. That’s what the new article will be about. But I noticed that … Read More
Last week Contracting Excellence Journal, a journal of World Commerce & Contracting, published my article Copy-and-Paste Contract Drafting Can Dull Your Wits or Leave You Demoralized. We Can Do Better! This article features one thought I haven’t articulated previously: That it’s demoralizing to be a copy-and-paste monkey!
