It’s time for me to remind you all of a modest but essential element in my legaltech toolbox—the Numbering Assistant, a Word add-in by PayneGroup. Why is the Numbering Assistant important to me? Because it allows me, a Word styles doofus, to quickly and easily apply to a contract either the MSCD hanging-indent scheme or […]
Should Contract Provisions Mean What Most People Think They Mean?
This recent post was about John Coyle’s great article on governing-law provisions. But I didn’t mention in that post the part of the article that endorses the notion that courts should interpret contract provisions consistent with what a majority of lawyers think they mean. Here’s how the article summarizes that notion (footnotes omitted): The Article’s […]
Having Nonparties Release Stuff
I’m doing what I can to advance the cause, but we’re all fortunate to have Glenn West plugging away, posting his analyses at such a rate that I have a hard time keeping up. For his collected oeuvre, go here. Today’s post is inspired by something from his archives, this 2016 post about whether a […]
Revisiting Governing-Law Provisions
In 2015 I did these three posts about governing-law provisions. Well, it’s time to look at the subject again, thanks to a law-review article by John F. Coyle of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The article is entitled The Canons of Construction for Choice-of-Law Clauses; go here for a PDF. Professor Coyle is […]
Lawyers Signing Contracts, Part 2
I love it when I write about something that doesn’t make sense, and caselaw comes along to show that not only does it not make sense, it can also lead to a messy, expensive fight. Today’s topic is the practice of having lawyers sign settlement agreements under the notation APPROVED AS TO FORM AND CONTENT. […]
Now Available: My Law-Review Article “Interpreting and Drafting ‘Efforts’ Provisions: From Unreason to Reason”
The summer 2019 issue of The Business Lawyer—the law review published by the Business Law Section of the ABA—contains my article Interpreting and Drafting Efforts Provisions: From Unreason to Reason. Go here for a PDF. No one has ever offered an even halfway serious attempt to explain a distinction between different efforts (or endeavours) provisions, […]
Information Now Up for My 14 November 2019 Seoul “Drafting Clearer Contracts” Seminar
As promised, go here for information about my 14 November 2019 “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminar in Seoul, organized by my partner LAWnB, a Thomson Reuters entity. As usual, the registration information is in Korean, but go here for a brochure in English. I’m looking forward to it, of course. I always enjoy my visits to […]
Book Review: “Garner’s Guidelines for Drafting and Editing Contracts,” by Bryan A. Garner
Bryan Garner is a big name in legal lexicography, litigation writing, and guidance on general English usage. He has a new book out, on contract drafting. It’s called Garner’s Guidelines for Drafting and Editing Contracts, and it’s not good. But first, why write a review? Because using any reference work requires a leap of faith, […]
Another Kind of “Including” Ambiguity
I noted with interest an article entitled “Including Without Limitation” (in this issue of The Transactional Lawyer), by Stephen L. Sepinuck of Gonzaga University School of Law. I’ll discuss later in this post the part about including without limitation. But let’s start with what is for me the more interesting part—the last two columns, in […]
Instances of “Best Efforts” and “Reasonable Efforts” in the Corpus of Contemporary American English
My article Interpreting and Drafting Efforts Provisions: From Unreason to Reason is in the summer 2019 issue of the journal The Business Lawyer, published by the Section of Business Law of the American Bar Association. (PDF here.) The article refers to instances of the phrases best efforts and reasonable efforts the Corpus of Contemporary American […]
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