Ken Adams

Recording Now Available of the “Modern Contract Drafting” Panel Discussion at UCL Faculty of Laws

I was in London last week. I rounded out a busy couple of days with a panel discussion hosted by UCL Faculty of Laws. It was entitled “Modern Contract Drafting: Improving Content, Upgrading Your Process, and Overcoming Inertia,” and it was held in the grand Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre. For the recording, go here. You can find more information about the … Read More

Jason Steed Reviews MSCD4

Jason Steed is a Twitter personality who moonlights as an appellate lawyer. (Kidding!) Go here for his positive review of the fourth edition of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. Jason’s review prompted a few thoughts. For the heck of it, here they are: Regarding what’s different about the fourth edition, the simplest metric is that it has a … Read More

When Entry into One Contract Is Consideration for Entry into Another Contract

Thanks to that one-man research department, Steven Sholk, I learned of this article on Law360, entitled 3 Contract Drafting Myths Debunked. It’s about TA Operating LLC v. Comdata Inc., C.A. No. 12954-CB (Del. Ch. 11 Sept. 2017) (PDF here). It serves as a reminder that if you regard two contracts as a package deal, with performance under one being conditioned on … Read More

An Unlikely Lesson in Ambiguity of the Part Versus the Whole

Here’s something I tweeted today: Pop songs are nice, but if you want to enforce promises, put them in a contract! pic.twitter.com/7jW8SgoI8t — Ken Adams (@AdamsDrafting) October 29, 2017 And here’s the tweet that followed it: Some saying should be "or", but song DOESN'T USE A CONJUNCTION! Invitation to a fight! I should have used "do one or more of … Read More

The Unpanel: Making Conference CLE Panel Sessions More Engaging

Over the years I’ve attended an assortment of legal conferences that feature continuing-legal-education (CLE) panel discussions. I find that I share a sentiment I’ve seen and heard expressed often enough: that despite the best intentions of the organizers and panelists, panel sessions can be dreary and not particularly helpful. Recently I posted on LinkedIn this item containing some general observations on what … Read More

The First Review of MSCD4

The website of the Society for Computers and Law—an English organization—has a review of the fourth edition of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. It’s by Charles Drayson, an English IT lawyer with his own firm. Go here for the review.

Does Contract Drafting Make You Sad?

Today I saw the following tweet: https://twitter.com/15lauren/status/921947032788414464 Here’s how I responded: You're doing it wrong :-) https://t.co/hKurJeRTmX — Ken Adams (@AdamsDrafting) October 22, 2017 The smiley in my tweet was to indicate that I was being facetious. Why was I being facetious? Because the process of drafting contracts, as it’s traditionally handled, would make anyone sad: You find, or are … Read More

Law Departments, Law Firms, and the Kettle Calling the Pot Black

In addition to the ACC annual meeting taking place in Washington, DC (I was on a panel), there’s the Legal Geek Conference happening in London. It came to my attention because of the following tweet: Yep…legal profession as the last vestige of the medieval guild system to survive. And #legaltech is here to change it #legalgeek pic.twitter.com/9NppMAzw6h — Joya (@joyavanhout) … Read More

My New Article on “Endeavours”

The English website The Lawyer has just published my new article Putting an End to Endeavours Nonsense. (Go here; free registration required.) I’d like this article to prompt some discussion, but the evidence I lay out is so clear-cut, I don’t think there’s any room for debate. Game over, case closed. The article mentions only briefly how to handle endeavours (or, … Read More