Today I read Bill Carleton’s post “Outing Startup Legal Documents.” In this May 2011 post (and in the comments to that post) I explained why I was less upbeat than Bill about the prospect of developing standard documents by having one or more unspecified persons boil down law-firm templates. Given Bill’s latest post, I thought I might as well wade … Read More
Contract layout is a function of how you position blocks of text on the page and how you enumerate them. In MSCD I recommend that you use for your contract layout what I call, unimaginatively enough, the MSCD enumeration scheme. It comes in “articles” and “sections” versions, the only difference between the two being whether your contract groups sections into … Read More
I spotted on Twitter @APribetic, @carolynelefant, @btannebaum and others talking about a video posted by one Rachel Rogers (and available here) that encourages entrepreneurs who aren’t in a position to hire a lawyer to do their own contracts rather than use online templates. I can’t work up much outrage over the video. Rachel’s advice was aimed at entrepreneurs engaged in … Read More
We’ve overhauled the page where you can subscribe for free, for one year, to Koncision’s confidentiality-agreement template. It’s at www.contractexpress.com/KoncisionNDA. While you’re there, check out my new 80-second video on what makes the template the most compelling way, by far, to create a confidentiality agreement.
I recently received from a reader the following email bringing to my attention shall refrain: Have you ever seen or written about a negative covenant written as “shall refrain from” instead of “shall not”? I see it today in an NDA from another party. It gives me some heartburn that the other party is obligated just to “refrain from” disclosing … Read More
Something that slipped through the cracks during my trip is Tim Cummins’s interview with me on his Commitment Matters blog; go here. Nothing I say in the interview will come as news to regular readers of this blog. But if anything is worth saying once, it’s worth saying 279 times …
I’ve thought it clear enough why companies don’t clean up their template contracts: Those who make the decisions are unaware of the problem. Or they’re aware of the problem but are unwilling to do anything about it, because for them the near-term cost of addressing the problem—in terms of expenditure of resources, loss of clout, or injury to their reputation … Read More
I was pleased to receive a couple of weeks ago an email from Jim Schmitt, chapter relations manager of the Healthcare Financial Management Association. Here’s the relevant part of Jim’s email: Thank you so much for the outstanding article, “Legal Usage in Drafting Corporate Resolutions.” I manage chapter relations for the Healthcare Financial Management Association and the article was very … Read More
My week in Australia was leisurely compared with the week that followed: fly to Kuala Lumpur; a seminar the next two days; fly to Bangkok the next day; a seminar the next two days; fly home (tomorrow). The focus of my time in both cities was obviously the seminars, two-day versions of my “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminar. Henceforth, my one-day … Read More
In this December 2011 post I considered document-design “bling” in Australian contracts. I’d now like to consider another issue relating to the look of Australian contracts: use of tabulated enumerated clauses. Consider the screenshot to the right (click on it to see it full-size). I think it’s a compact but otherwise representative example of how Australian drafters like to break … Read More
