In this December 2006 post I discussed ways of retrieving contracts that have been filed on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR system. In a comment I mentioned an additional source, RealDealDocs, but noted that I hadn’t kicked their tires. Well, I still haven’t, because I’m happy doing my own searches (for free) on Lexis. But if you’re interested … Read More
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 consideration in the lead-in to … Read More
As I mentioned in this post, this coming Friday, August 10th, from 2:30PM to 4:30PM, Dick Wydick, Bryan Garner, and I will be speaking at the ABA annual meeting in San Francisco. The topic is “How to Write Better Business Documents.” Some promotional materials gave as the title of this session “The Art of Persuasive Brief Writing in Commercial Litigation.” … Read More
[Revised August 8, 2007] I’ve previously blogged about how drafters often refer to a given set, then refer to subsets that compose all or part of that set, even though there’s no question as to the boundaries of that set. I’ve decided to call this phenomenon “needless elaboration.” It’s like saying “I don’t eat fish, whether fresh-water or salt-water.” Simply … Read More
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 the years since, I notice, … Read More
