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In contracts and elsewhere, it’s standard to refer to remediation of environmental contamination. It’s also standard to use the verb remediate to refer to the act of remediation. Garner’s Modern American Usage isn’t fond of remediate: remediate, a back-formation from remediation, is either a needless variant of remedy or a piece of gobbledygook. E.g.: “The evidence suggested that there was … Read More

For the heck of it, every so often I search “contract drafting” on Twitter. A few times I’ve been pleasantly surprised to spot a mention of my book. Once someone who evidently was then in one of my seminars tweeted that the seminar wasn’t as much fun as her dinner with an old friend the previous evening. No surprise there—I … Read More

In an item posted today on the (new) legal writer, Ray Ward says the following: Right now I’m reading a long list of definitions in a bankruptcy plan of reorganization, and I just came across this one: “‘SpiritBank’ means SpiritBank.” As definitions go, that’s pretty lame. I’m sure you, dear reader, have seen other examples of definitions that are self-evident, … Read More

[Updated June 4, 2009] I’m pleased to announce that starting June 11, I’ll be offering through West LegalEdcenter a series of seven video webcasts entitled “Drafting Clearer Contracts.” Each webcast will be an hour long. They’ll be rolled out one by one through the second half of July. Five of the webcasts will explore topics discussed in my book A … Read More

How come one drafts a contact but writes a letter? The verb draft has a number of possible meanings, but here’s what the Oxford English Dictionary—the bound version, not the online version—gives as the one definition relating to preparing documents: “To make a draft or rough copy of (a document); to draw up in preliminary form, which may be afterwards perfected.” … Read More

Having parties to a contract date their signatures makes sense when there’s a lag time between when the first party signs and the last party signs. And some auditors are requiring that their clients use dated signatures in all their contracts. But dating signatures can be a nuisance. As I noted in this November 2008 blog post, one problem is … Read More

The interviews I’ve done on this blog have been about technologies relevant to the contract process or have explored some narrow topic that I’m particularly interested in. What’s been missing is interviews in which people who work with contracts discuss issues relevant to them. Here’s the first such interview; I’ll be doing others every so often, all under the rubric … Read More

Black-and-white is simpler than shades of gray—the most straightforward MSCD recommendations are those urging you to scrap entirely a given word or phrase. Here’s a partial list of words and phrases that ideally would be absent from your contracts: at no time best efforts covenant for the avoidance of doubt hereinafter referred to as including but not limited to including … Read More

Legal OnRamp, the online forum for in-house counsel and invited outside lawyers and vendors, has announced the “FMC Technologies 1° Law Litigation Value Challenge.” It’s a beauty contest for law firms interested in doing FMC’s litigation work. I suppose what distinguishes it from the run-of-the-mill beauty contest is that Legal OnRamp represents a particulary public platform. And for all I … Read More