This week I noticed a new blog, Improving Contracts. It’s by Chris Simkins, a commercial lawyer based in the UK; he’s Head of Contract Optimisation at Simmons & Simmons, the global law firm. (Nice title!)
The blog has the tagline “A blog about creating better contracts,” but I asked Chris for a bit more detail, and here’s what he said:
I’ve created the blog to capture and share ideas about the world of contracts. I hope it will become a place to offer practical tips based on my work as a lawyer and contract improvement consultant, as well as somewhere to explore broader themes that interest me. So, a possibly uneasy mix of the pragmatic and the philosophical—but hopefully a generally entertaining read either way!
Only a few blogs deal with contracts, so one more is a welcome addition. But it’s not just blogs that have something to contribute. After all, there’s now little to distinguish blogs from other online publications, other than use of the name blog. We could do with more long-form writing about contracts, whether the source is single-author blogs, company blogs, clearinghouses (see this 2022 blog post for more on that), trade-group publications, higher-education publications, or legacy media.
By “long-form writing”, I suppose I mean something more than your average LinkedIn post. But LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter (at least until Musk) is where a lot of the social-media action shifted, so there’s something refreshingly retro about starting a contracts blog now.
What makes single-author blogs interesting is that they give the author a forum for developing their expertise and a voice. But if you want to make a name for yourself, feeding the blog beast can be demanding. And you shouldn’t expect applause from your online readership. That’s why blogs tend to come and go. There’s nothing wrong with that—there’s no reason why anyone should keep blogging once they’ve had their fill.
OK, now go visit Chris’s blog!
