People who attended certain of my recent public seminars received a copy of the first edition of MSCD just as it was about to be made obsolete. So I’m making the second edition available for $25—one third the regular price—plus shipping to those who participated in the following public seminars: April 1, 2008 seminar in [...]
In this post on his Goldman’s Observations blog, Eric Goldman describes a dispute between FaceTime Communications and Reuters. Reuters licensed FaceTime’s software for two years and devoted significant resources to customizing the software. Reuters had an option to pay $150,000 for a perpetual license, but for reasons that aren’t entirely explained, Reuters didn’t exercise the [...]
Normally I wouldn’t dream of going public with thoughts on writing in general. A vast number of people have busied themselves with that topic, so there’s no chance of my having anything novel to say. I regularly give thanks to the gods of writing that I’ve been given the near-virgin territory of contract drafting to [...]
West Legalworks would like me to do webinars for them. I’m open to the idea. I could do a series based on MSCD—maybe eight one-hour webinars. They’d be done live and then would be available on demand. Would doing MSCD webinars cause me to lose seminar business? I don’t think so. If you come to [...]
This past Friday and Saturday I was in Atlanta, at Emory Law School’s conference on “Teaching Drafting and Transactional Skills: The Basics and Beyond.” (Click here to go to the relevant page of Emory Law School’s website.) The conference was organized by Tina Stark, an Emory professor and the executive director of the school’s new Center [...]
Considering having me do an in-house seminar but want to know more? Then I suggest you might want to have me give you and any other decisionmaker at your organization a run-through of whichever of my seminars interests you, “Contract Drafting—Language and Layout” or “The Structure of M&A Contracts.” We’d use GoToMeeting or WebEx so [...]
A few books on contract drafting have been published in the last couple of years: Butt, Peter & Castle, Richard, Modern Legal Drafting: A Guide to Using Clearer Language (2d ed. 2006). Darmstadter, Howard, Hereof, Thereof, and Everywhereof (2d ed. 2008). Haggard, Thomas R., and Kuney, George W., Legal Drafting in a Nutshell (3d ed. [...]
The site was offline for most of yesterday due to high drama involving my server. Sorry about that; it shouldn’t happen again.
On Friday I’ll be heading for Geneva, where I’ll be giving a series of public seminars from April 21 through April 25. Click here for more information. If you want to explore the language of contracts in the company of a few like-minded people, these seminars would provide an unmatched opportunity.
How do I love Canada? Let me count the ways: It was a Canadian organization—Osgoode Professional Developement—that asked me to do my first public seminar. Attendance at my seminars in the U.S. with West Legalworks can fluctuate wildly, but my Osgoode seminars in Toronto sell out. (The next one is on June 16.) And last [...]
This from the Lex column in today’s Financial Times, regarding Bear Stearns and the Cerberus litigation: It is too simplistic to blame sloppy drafting for disputes. Still, there may be room for improvement in terms of updating the often-archaic language used in merger agreements, as firms such as Jones Day and contract specialist Kenneth Adams [...]
Input from readers of this blog has already served to enhance the second edition of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. But why stop there? I’ve just sent the ABA the manuscript for MSCD2. I enjoyed putting it together, as it contains a boatload of new material. What it needs now is proofreading, and [...]
[Update March 24, 5:30PM EDT: Some people are suggesting that there's something fishy to the story of Wachtell's "mistakes." See, for example, this post at Dealbreaker, and this one on the Conglomerate Blog. On the other hand, Steven Davidoff's analysis, at DealBook, takes the story at face value. I'll let others who are closer to [...]
I’m grateful to stalwart readers Steven Sholk and Mike Wokasch for contacting me about the Bear Stearns merger agreement. (Click here to go to a PDF copy.) This deal raises all sorts of policy issues, but we at AdamsDrafting say to heck with the big picture—let’s look at the drafting angle! I offer below some [...]
I’m working on the introduction to MSCD2, and five minutes ago I wrote this: English is used in contracts around the world, and not only in contracts between companies from English-speaking countries. English has become the lingua franca of international business, so a contract between, say, a French company and a Brazilian company is more [...]
[I was prompted to write this post after consulting, over the past few months, dozens of cases ostensibly involving ambiguity but in fact dealing with a range of other problems. I plan on including a version of this in MSCD2, so I'd be pleased to receive comments.] Uncertainty in contract language arises principally from six [...]
Reader Michael Fleming informed me of US Salt, Inc. v. Broken Arrow, Inc., Civ. No. 07-1988, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 10841 (D. Minn. Feb. 11, 2008). This case serves as a reminder that a court would likely conclude that if Smith promises to purchase widgets from you, you’ve in effect also promised to supply widgets [...]
Sidestepping a contentious contract issue with the notion of working it out in litigation is a standard strategy, but you don’t often find examples of it in the wild. That’s why I noted with interest oral argument before the Supreme Court on January 16 in Quanta v. LG, as case dealing with patent exhaustion. (Click [...]
Have you thought to yourself, as you flipped through A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting, that I’d failed to address adequately, or at all, some issue that’s dear to your heart? Do you have a beef with any of my recommendations? Do you not like the binding? The cover? The font? If so, now’s [...]
The first full year of the AdamsDrafting blog is winding to a close. Don’t worry, I’m not going to wax self-indulgently lyrical about the lot of the blogger. Instead, I just want to warn you that over the few three months I’ll have less time to devote to the blog, because I’ve promised the ABA [...]
In his Market Movers blog, journalist Mark Salmon discusses whether there are any benefits to sloppy contract drafting. Mark quotes another blogger to the effect that sloppy drafting can represent an attempt to bury an issue in impenetrable verbiage. I added a brief comment to Mark’s post, but I’m not inclined to attempt a definitive [...]
I sporadically find myself discussing the nexus between contract drafting and contract law, or rather the contract law that’s taught in the first year of law school. A reader pointed out to me this post on the Conglomerate Blog, which offers a musical analogy to explain the relationship. Buried deep in the comments to that [...]
A few weeks ago David Munn of Fair Isaac Corporation sent me the following email: Your email below reminded me of a pet peeve of mine that I don’t believe you’ve written about. You wrote “My class runs from 4:30PM to 6:30PM EST.” Your usage is correct because you are referring to a time in [...]
On Minor Wisdom, Ray Ward listed this blog as one of his ten favorite law blogs. So did China Law Blog. It’s great to have people acknowledge my efforts in this manner. But apparently I now have to share the luuurve by naming my own ten favorites. I used to be a chronic non-joiner, but [...]
I’ve resisted the temptation to turn this blog into a drafting freak show. But what the heck—step right up! … In this article I offer plenty of mix-and-match efforts provisions, but the one immediately below nevertheless caught my eye as I was trawling through EDGAR today—three different efforts provisions in one! NNOG will use its [...]
When I’m stymied by a particular English-usage question and I can’t find an answer in my usual sources, I’ll consult the Chicago Style Q&A, an online resource of The Chicago Manual of Style. I was browsing the Q&A the other day—I’m waiting breathlessly for them to post an answer to a question I submitted—when I [...]
Are you a lawyer? Do you draft contracts? Do you have other people draft contracts for you? Yes? Then I have a pop quiz for you. Consider the following questions: Does the phrase representations and warranties determine the remedies available to a contract party? When you draft contracts, do you include a traditional recital of [...]
I just read “The Billable Hour Must Die,” an article by Scott Turow in the August 2007 issue of the ABA Journal. The following paragraph caught my eye: The people writing contracts were, in my youthful view, not much different from consultants. Although I have learned to love and appreciate hundreds of transactional lawyers in [...]
I’m contemplating writing an article or blog post about law firms using “practice support lawyers” (also referred to as “staff attorneys”) to draft contracts. If you’re a practice support lawyer in the U.S., the U.K., or elsewhere and would be interested in discussing this topic with me, please contact me. I wouldn’t use your name, [...]
Given that I’ve been blogging for a year, I thought I’d take the opportunity to pull together in this post, in the form of “dos” and “don’ts,” some components of my online presence. The coverage is necessarily patchy, but it’s safe to say that in the past year I’ve been able to write about the [...]
Given the attention I’ve been paying lately to my public seminars, my redrafting department—me—has asked for some airtime. Whoever you are, it’s a very safe bet that the contracts you work with could do with some significant help. As one of my services, I redraft clients’ contracts. By eliminating the broad range of problems that [...]
In this item that he posted on his blog last November, Wayne Schiess mentions that when he was a full-time practicing lawyer, he thought he was a good writer. He says he now realizes that he was quite mediocre and unaware of his limitations. He poses the following question: “Many practicing lawyers today believe themselves [...]
Quite a few readers of this blog have signed up to be notified by email whenever I post a new item. But I suspect that there are those who find it a bit intrusive to receive an email from me once, twice, or three times a week. If that applies to you—and I know I’d [...]
I’ve recently been pondering a distinction I make, one that I alluded to in my recent Geneva seminars: I don’t refer to “plain language” (or “plain English”). Instead, I use the phrase “standard English.” By advocating the term “standard English,” I don’t mean to get caught up in controversies regarding whether it suggests some sort [...]
As I’m currently in Geneva, Switzerland, giving a series of seminars, I wanted to take the opportunity to post an item with a local flavor. To that end, I’d like to consider how contracts drafted in civil-law systems differ from contracts drafted by common-law lawyers. It isn’t a subject that I’ve studied at any great [...]
Last week I received an analysis of the 2006 amendments to the Delaware General Corporation Law. That reminded me of my one manuscript that never came close to becoming a published article—my critique of drafting usages in the DGCL. I wrote this manuscript about three years ago, when I was flailing around, seeking some way—any [...]
