Month: April 2012

The New Engineering Contract and Using the Present Tense to State Obligations

I find it particularly interesting when an institution adopts a novel approach to stating obligations. Who can forget the Construction Specifications Institute’s recommendation, stated in its Project Delivery Practice Guide (formerly Project Resource Manual), that in architectural specifications you use the imperative mood, not the indicative mood, to express obligations. (That’s something I discussed in this 2009 post on the AdamsDrafting … Read More

Reviving a Contract After Its Term Has Ended

Last week I received the following inquiry from reader Vance Koven: I am moved to put this issue to you, as it is in some ways related to your comments in MSCD and elsewhere on back-dating contracts, which I agree is a no-no, especially for public companies, or making contracts “retroactively effective” in similar ways. I have come across a … Read More

Docracy’s Contract-Drafting Contest—Starting Sunday, April 15

In conjunction with the Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy Clinic’s “Legal Hackathon,” today Docracy is launching a “hacking contracts” contest. To enter, use Docracy to revise one of four contracts (described as easy, medium, or hard). You’ll have two weeks to submit entries. The winner gets a Kindle Fire. And no, you don’t have to go to Brooklyn to enter! … Read More

My Name Is Ken Adams, and I’m an “Any” Addict

[Updated April 14, 2012: I’ve uploaded a new version of the template. Besides the changes mentioned below, I also belatedly fixed an annoying numbering glitch lurking in the first subsection of the “Notices” provision of the “BasicWord” version of the template. (“Listnum,” anyone?) I apologize for the inconvenience that has doubtless caused some of you.] Yesterday an interested observer sent … Read More

What to Put on a Cover Sheet

I’ve had occasion recently to consider cover sheets for contracts. That’s what I call the page that’s slapped on the front of a contract containing a table of contents—the first page of a table of contents isn’t what you’d want to show the world. In my days as a law-firm foot soldier, I’d cobble together rudimentary cover sheets. They consisted … Read More

True Obscenity: The Contract Language in “Fifty Shades of Grey”

*This isn’t an April Fools’ prank!* I had been vaguely aware of the “Fifty Shades” trilogy, described in this Maureen Dowd column as “bondage-themed romanticas that have evoked hysteria, whipping up a frenzy with the housewives of Long Island and rippling out from there.” They feature a dashing mogul, Christian Grey, and the object of his stern affections, the winsome Anastasia … Read More