It’s time for me to revisit what verb tense to use in a conditional clause. It’s OK, no need to thank me! The following examples fall into two groups, those that relate to a moment in time and those that relate to a period of time. (In the examples, the conditional clause is the part beginning with If; the matrix … Read More
A few months ago I noticed that the Georgetown Law Journal had published a student note entitled Is This Really The Best We Can Do? American Courts’ Irrational Efforts Clause Jurisprudence And How We Can Start To Fix It. It’s by Charles Thau, who has now graduated. Hi Charles, and congratulations on the note! My only reason for mentioning this … Read More
Sporadically I get feedback from people who have taken my online course Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass. Today the professional-development person at a law firm said to me in an email, “We’ve signed up a few of our associates this year for your Masterclass sessions with great feedback.” And here’s the review someone just posted: This is a great class. It … Read More
Today the ACC Docket published my article with Michael Fleming entitled Reviewing Business Contracts: What to Look For and How to Look for It. Michael and I go way back. He was one of the first commenters on this blog. If you have any comments or think we missed something, we’d be happy to hear it.
In this April 2017 blog post I unleashed on the world my chart showing the different components of efforts provisions. Well, it’s time to add another column to that baby, unfortunately. That’s because I followed up on something I buried in this September 2019 post on the LegalSifter blog, namely an instance of the phrase mediation efforts. That offered the … Read More
Hell is other people’s reviews. In October I bought a copy of The Joy of Pizza, by Dan Richer with Katie Parla. Richer is owner of the restaurant Razza, a noted pizza joint in Jersey City. Parla is a food writer and cookbook author based in Italy. After buying it, I looked at some reviews on Amazon. I quickly spotted … Read More
Defined terms add value—they allow you to state a concept more concisely and consistently than you might otherwise. But they come at a cost: Using an autonomous definition breaks up reading—you force the reader to read both the autonomous definition and the related provision. Integrated definitions add a bit of clutter in the form of the defined-term parenthetical. All the … Read More
One consequence of my not doing deals is that I have little occasion to consider what effect, if any, e-signing has on the wording and format of contracts. As far as I can tell, DocuSign works with whatever signature blocks you have. The only implication I can think of is that if signatures are always dated, you shouldn’t include a … Read More
OK, it’s categories-of-contract-language time again! More specifically, the topic is language of policy, which states rules for how the contract works. Language of policy relates to stuff that happens automatically, as in This agreement is governed by German law. One shortcoming in language of policy is when you use structures analogous to the passive voice, as in Rent is payable … Read More
The blog post before this one (here) refers to extensive comments on a 2017 blog post. And also this weekend, I had occasion to revisit comments in another post, from 2019. I ended up incorporating in an article I’m writing the gist of comments by three regulars. Comments on my blog have been vital over the years. But they’ve dropped … Read More
