Having just responded to a traditionalist asserting that I’m flirting with disaster by deviating from “tested” contract language, I was pleased to receive the following email from Andrew Mitton, a lawyer in private practice in Anchorage, Alaska:
I’m a faithful reader of your blog and regularly refer to your Manual of Style. I recently redrafted some stock purchase documents to conform to your drafting guidelines and received the following email from the CPA in the matter:
“Nice documents. I have read an awful number of convoluted and slanted documents that I don’t think anyone could understand. i.e., the ones that end up in court. These are straightforward, balanced and easy to understand.”
The same CPA told me that he plans on referring more work my way. So I wanted to say thank you for your blog and your book. They both have improved my practice.
I do what I do because I think it helps make contracts clearer and helps everyone save time, save money, reduce risk, and enhance their competitiveness. It’s nice to be reminded that things can indeed work out that way.
I’ll find a thousand published cases where the tried and true was litigated for every case critics can find where something other than the tried and true was litigated (i.e., “states” as opposed to “represents”). One of the problems, as I see it in the trenches, is that most attorneys do not want to take the time to re-write their contracts since the cost of doing so can not (typically) be paid by the client. I too have had responses similar to the response Andrew received.
The cost of rewriting contracts is obviously something that Koncision would like to do something about.