Layout

You Might Want to Make Your Section Headings Non-Random

Thanks to Eric Goldman (@ericgoldman) I learned about a recent opinion out of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. (PDF copy here.) It relates to a dispute between Corbin Bernsen, actor, and Innovative Legal Marketing. Bernsen acted as spokesperson for an ILM campaign, but it all ended in tears. What caught Eric’s eye, and mine, was … Read More

Ellen Lupton Wades In on Document Design for Contracts

In this December 2011 post I questioned the utility, for purposes of contracts, of what I called document-design “bling.” And in this February 2012 post I suggested that you can go too far in breaking up contract text. But I’m aware that I have negligible credentials in document design. And I’m aware that when it comes to the look of … Read More

The MSCD Enumeration Scheme: A Manifesto

Contract layout is a function of how you position blocks of text on the page and how you enumerate them. In MSCD I recommend that you use for your contract layout what I call, unimaginatively enough, the MSCD enumeration scheme. It comes in “articles” and “sections” versions, the only difference between the two being whether your contract groups sections into … Read More