As I mentioned in this blog post, I’ve been leafing through some textbooks intended for teaching contract drafting. One of them is Tina L. Stark & Monica L. Llorente, Drafting Contracts: How and Why Lawyers Do What They Do (3d ed 2024). I happened to notice two technical mistakes in that textbook relating to principles of English usage. I thought … Read More
Bryan Garner is a big name in legal lexicography, litigation writing, and guidance on general English usage. He has a new book out, on contract drafting. It’s called Garner’s Guidelines for Drafting and Editing Contracts, and it’s not good. But first, why write a review? Because using any reference work requires a leap of faith, and book reviews help readers … Read More
I noticed this article published by IACCM. It’s entitled Why Are Agreements So Hard to Understand?, and it’s by Kristian Foss, a partner in a Norwegian law firm. It prompted the following thoughts: Contracts aren’t easy to understand? No surprise there. Sure, traditional contract drafting is dreadful, but the awkward fact is that transactions tend to be complicated. “Easy” is … Read More
I keep plugging away, inexorably, to further develop the body of knowledge that makes its way into A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. But I’m starting to pay more attention to inertia, that unavoidable fact of my professional life. Stripped of any delicacy, here’s the exchange I routinely have with different kinds of organizations: Me: Your contracts … Read More
In this post a year ago I offered a brief review of the second edition of A–Z Guide to Boilerplate and Commercial Clauses, by Mark Anderson and Victor Warner. (Mark is a regular and valued presence in the comments to this blog.) Well, a third edition is now available, and the publisher, Bloomsbury Professional, was kind enough to send me … Read More
Over the past couple of days I’ve been dipping into the new book co-authored by Antonin Scalia and Bryan Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts. My interest is drafting contracts, not interpreting them. But to stay out of trouble when drafting contracts, it helps to have a decent grasp of how judges ascertain the meaning of contract language. So … Read More
