Blog

“In No Way”

Do yourselves a favor and strike in no way in favor of does not or will not, as in the following examples: Borrower hereby agrees that this Amendment in no way acts [read does not act] as a release or relinquishment of the Liens and rights securing payments of its Obligations. … and such holding shall in no way [read will not] affect the validity or … Read More

Caption Contest: Contract Drafting and Anger Management

Welcome to The Koncise Drafter’s first-ever caption contest! I thought it high time that I let my readers indulge their sense of humor (or snark)—I invite you to submit in the comments your proposed caption to the following photograph. Allow me to take the first crack, off the top of my head: “Cleary Gottlieb associate responsible for drafting the Google–Motorola … Read More

How Your Lawyer Can Help You Create a Koncision NDA

As I announced in this blog post, we’re now accepting nonlawyers as Koncision customers. But if you’re not a lawyer and you suspect that you’d benefit from a lawyer’s input while completing the questionnaire for our confidentiality-agreement template, here’s how that could be arranged: You could ask your lawyer to complete the questionnaire and generate the output document, for a … Read More

Some Thoughts on Koncision’s Value for Money

I think of relative value as being a function of cost in relation to benefit. Koncision isn’t giving away the confidentiality-agreement template. To some, that might make Koncision all too conventional an offering. But consider the cost-benefit relationship. Koncision would allow you to quickly create a confidentiality agreement with state-of-the-art substance and unmatched clarity. Furthermore, it would be tailored to … Read More

Announcing Koncision 2.0—The Changes We Made, and Why We Made Them

We’ve made several changes to Koncision. They’re significant enough that we’re describing them, collectively, as “Koncision 2.0”: Anyone may now use Koncision—not just lawyers. We’ve added a new subscription option: for $500, you may use our confidentiality-agreement template for purposes of copying language to update your own Word templates. (We’ve also increased to $100 from $50 the cost of subscribing … Read More

“By” Versus “On Behalf Of”

In a comment to this post, reader Westmorlandia offered the following: I usually prefer “on behalf of” when talking about execution, as otherwise some lawyer will try to argue that a contract signed through agency (almost always the case with companies) was not signed “by” the company. So, the question is, would there be any benefit to saying “signed on … Read More

Using My New Qomo QIT30 to Annotate PowerPoint Presentations

For a couple of years I used my Wacom Graphire Wireless tablet to annotate PowerPoint slides during my seminars. (I wrote about it in this 2009 post on the AdamsDrafting blog.) It doesn’t have a screen—instead, it has a flat surface on which I wrote with a pen-like stylus, with my scribbles appearing on the projected image of my laptop … Read More

Q&A on Solos and Contract Drafting

Any law firm looking to put its contract drafting on an efficient footing will face challenges. (I discuss them in this article.) But slightly different considerations might come into play if you’re a solo transactional lawyer. That’s something I decided to explore with the following three volunteers: Abe Sadie: Abe was a colleague in my BigLaw days; last year went … Read More

What Provisions Do You Find Particularly Complex to Draft?

I recall that in my BigLaw days, I found it particularly challenging to draft antidilution provisions for convertible securities. (To get a sense of why that was the case, consult this article on the subject, co-authored by Michael Woronoff, a friend of the blog.) I fantasize that someday I’ll have the chance to draft antidilution provisions for a Koncision document-assembly … Read More

What Part of the Contract Process, If Any, Requires a Lawyer?

[Updated 16 August 2020] I saw in a discussion on the LinkedIn “Contract and Commercial Management” group a reference to “leaving the law bit to the lawyers.” That got me wondering what, when it comes to deciding the terms of a deal and expressing it in a contract, “the law bit” might consist of. By my reckoning, the law bit … Read More