If you’re an individual and you want to sign up for my new online course Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass, you go to the course home page, here. But if you’re a company, law firm, or government agency, you contact me directly. That’s what two companies did, and soon I’ll start a series of Masterclass for each of them. One will … Read More
Late last year I did my first post on dual verb structures. I’ve done four of them, here, here, here, and here. Actually, make that six, because I now introduce to you the supremely effed up structure agrees to X and continue to X. I found only a few examples on EDGAR, but enough to confirm to my satisfaction that … Read More
For 15 years I’ve been haranguing people about the has a duty test. I can be relied on to ask a given group, way too many times, What is the first diagnostic test? In my dreams, those in attendance respond in unison, boot-camp style: The has a duty test! Allow me to explain. The foundation of controlled drafting is how … Read More
My peeps at the ABA Section of Business Law were in a mood to have me talk about MSCD: go here for an item in Business Law Today entitled BLS Book Celebrates 16 Years in Guiding Practitioners on Contract Drafting. I tried to make it more entertaining than it might have been.
Last weekend I indulged myself with this post, in which I observed, without surprise, that I’m hardly ever challenged in the marketplace of ideas. Well, if traditionalists aren’t challenging me, what do they contribute to the marketplace of ideas? I don’t go looking for such stuff, so for this blog post I’m relying on a tip from a reader. To … Read More
Generally, parentheses are of limited use in contracts. As MSCD says, “The limited and stylized prose of contracts isn’t the place for explanations and asides, so drafters should have no reason to use parentheses to serve that function.” But parentheses do serve a few specific functions. For example, MSCD says that “if you need to express that two different arrangements … Read More
I was tickled to note this article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel regarding Kanye West’s deranged political campaign. Here’s the relevant bit: West’s campaign is arguing he belongs on the presidential ballot in Wisconsin even if his campaign turned in his nomination signatures 14 seconds after the 5 p.m. deadline Aug. 4. The 23-page document, filed Monday, says a state … Read More
No one owes it to me to take me on or to engage in discussion. But after a certain point, the silence becomes deafening. This past week I did a blog post entitled Many Judges Are Bad at Textual Interpretation. What Do We Do About It? The first half consists of my critique of textual interpretation offered in a recent … Read More
This is the first week of the first three series of my new course Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass. It has had its nerve-wracking moments. Ah, yes, I have to remember to mute the second incarnation of myself that I invite to join each Zoom session to annotate a PowerPoint presentation. And a tropical-storm-induced power outage always adds excitement. I’m quickly … Read More
The legal profession is afflicted by systemic problems, some urgent, some chronic. But here’s one you might not be aware of: it appears that many judges are ill-equipped to perform basic textual interpretation. Such a generalization has to be grounded in specifics, so let’s look at a recent opinion issued by the Minnesota Court of Appeals, State v. Khalil, No. … Read More
