[Updated 8:00 p.m. EDT, August 10, 2011: Well, that was a brief experiment: the Highlighter Wordpress plugin was interfering with other features of the site, so I uninstalled it. Seeing that no one used it in the two weeks it was available, I don’t expect howls of disappointment.] As an experiment, I’ve installed Highlighter on this site. Select any text … Read More
When I’m overcome with the urge to consider use of and/or in legal writing, I now know where to go: to this post on Slaw by Ted Tjaden, national director of knowledge management at the Canadian law firm McMillan. I knew right off that Ted had left no stone unturned in his research, as he starts off by citing my … Read More
I’d like to revisit an aspect of the traditional recital of consideration. I mentioned in a footnote in my first book, Legal Usage in Drafting Corporate Agreements, that in some jurisdictions a recital of consideration will establish a rebuttable presumption that the contract in question is supported by consideration. An inquiry from a reader served to remind me that MSCD … Read More
I soon have to start preparing for the fall semester, when I resume my teaching duties at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. I teach one semester a year, and I teach—guess what?—contract drafting. Since I started teaching at Penn Law, I’ve made a redrafting project part of every semester. The idea is to redraft a contract, or part of … Read More
Here’s a tidbit from the Bratz doll litigation that I hadn’t noticed previously. In its opinion from last October (go here for a PDF copy), the Ninth Circuit said the following about the phrase “at any time during my employment” (footnote omitted): The district court disagreed, holding at summary judgment that the agreement assigned to Mattel “any doll or doll fashions [Bryant] … Read More
It’s pretty easy to find instances of a court offering a shaky analysis of ambiguity. I recently submitted to a periodical an article about a head-scratching instance of such misdiagnosis—let’s see if it’s accepted. In the interim, you might want to check out “Ambiguous Drafting and the 12-Pound Cat,” by Jeffrey S. Ammon, a member in the Grand Rapids, Michigan … Read More
As noted in this ABA Journal item, Chief Justice Roberts doesn’t find law reviews very useful. Neither do I. For purposes of this post, I’m taking “law review” to mean a scholarly journal that focuses on legal issues and is published by faculty or students at a law school or by a bar association. Every so often I glance at … Read More
My thanks—I think!—go to Heidi Anderson of ContractsProf Blog for helping, with this post, to spread the news of litigation over bison-themed sculptures commissioned by Kevin Costner. Of course, a contract is involved; go here for a PDF copy. (That’s the first time I’ve linked to celebrity website TMZ.) What caught my eye was use of the word agreeably in … Read More
Regarding Chancellor Strine’s discussion of MSCD (see this post), I’ve already said that I concur with the chancellor’s statement that “One can even share and in fact applaud Adams’ encouragement of clearer forms of contract drafting but find it not useful in interpreting a contract written in the form Adams wishes to abandon.” But that brought to mind a broader … Read More
In this post last month, I responded to this blog post by Kingsley Martin by considering the extent to which artificial-intelligence analysis of a set of precedent contracts can, by itself, allow you to create optimal contract language. I concluded that it cannot. I’m now going to continue gnawing on that bone; if you found my previous post a drag, … Read More
