I’ve previously announced that 4 October 2018 I’ll be giving a “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminar in Mumbai with Asian Legal Business. (For more information, go here.) I’ve had very little contact with India over the years. In 2017 I played a tiny part in a contract-drafting competition run by an Indian law school. Also in 2017, I wrote this post … Read More
I’m looking forward to returning to Seoul for a “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminar on 16 November 2018. Go here for more information, in Korean; go here for an English-language flyer. My enthusiasm for Korea is such that in 2014 I wrote and had translated into Korean an article for Korean Legal Times entitled English-Language Contracts: Reducing the Clutter and Confusion. Go … Read More
No-disparaging provisions are found in employment agreements, separation agreements, settlement agreements, even end-user license agreements. But there’s a problem with no-disparaging provisions. … The rest of this post is on the LegalSifter blog. To read it, go here.
Longtime readers will be aware that I’m particularly fond of finding effed-up ways of saying may. The fourth edition of MSCD lists in table 4 more than a dozen wordier and less-clear ways of saying Acme may, but this post from earlier this year confirmed that that list wasn’t exhaustive. And today, thanks to my work on the LegalSifter production … Read More
OK, which do you like better: nonsolicitation provision no-soliciting provision And here: nondisparagement provision no-disparaging provision And here: noncompetition provision no-competing provision Me, I like the second option in each. The first option is a clunky abstract noun. Boo. The second is a gerund, basically a verb form acting as a noun. (More on gerunds here.) Less clunky. Yay.
This week I received the following inquiry from a reader: I’m a lawyer, and I’ve been working with contracts for the past five years. Your blog has been the first place I look for guidance on drafting questions. Thank you for being a great resource. I find that many lawyers resist implementing the modern approaches you discuss. Typically, I feel … Read More
The language of contracts in English is basically the same the world over, but with local variations. In the course of my work for LegalSifter this week, I learned of one such variation—the English affinity for the word, uh, variation. Or more specifically, the combination amendment or variation. Actually, it’s not only the English who indulge in this: you see the … Read More
There’s a specialized kind of business contract that I’ll call “general terms”—a document created by a company or other organization to describe how its system operates. A set of general terms might describe how Acme sells widgets to many different buyers, or it might describe a network, with different kinds of entities playing different roles. A set of general terms … Read More
Today I received the following inquiry from reader Ryan: I’m curious if you have a view on a practice that continues to baffle me. In the process of negotiating tri-party or multi-party agreements and exchanging drafts or mark-ups via e-mail to a large distribution of the parties and their counsel, some attorneys always include something like the following: “Please note … Read More
Some of my hard-core readers have probably grown disenchanted with this blog. “Oooh, Mr. Globetrotter went to Denmark!” “Oooh, Mr. Fancypants is doing the artificial-intelligence thing!” Well, I still got it, bitchez. Courtesy of Fabian Schäfer, SAP’s Chief Expert in Legal Information Management, check out the following (emphasis added): AFFILIATE shall mean a corporation, company or other entity, now or … Read More
