Yesterday I launched an online store to sell A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting T-shirts and mugs. Why? For the heck of it. See this blog post for more. The items on sale feature, in addition to the cover of MSCD, the design in the image above, which was the winning entry in a contest I ran on 99designs. … Read More
Have you yearned for A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting merchandise? Well, your days of yearning are now over: go here to buy two kinds of MSCD T-shirt (both short-sleeve and long-sleeve) and two kinds of mug! Wait, that’s not quite as crass as it seems! First, I’ll donate all proceeds to a worthy cause, the Belmont Child Care … Read More
The photo above shows the spines of all five editions of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. It doesn’t bring to mind anything particularly profound—just two thoughts. First, when considered from day to day, what I do has been more fun than it has any right to be. But if you consider the totality of it, you realize that … Read More
So the fifth edition of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting has been unleashed. (Buy it here!) You own the fourth edition and are wondering whether you should fork over for MSCD5 US$139.95 plus any tax and shipping. If working with contracts is an important part of what you do and you’ve found MSCD4 valuable, I think you’d appreciate … Read More
This week I was noodling with some contract language, and I wrote the Company or any of its Members. That was a mistake—Member was defined to mean a member of the Company, not a member of any limited liability company. I should have said the Company or any Member. I was attuned to this because the day before I had … Read More
So much for mid-April! Print copies of the fifth edition of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting are now available for purchase from the American Bar Association, here, for US$139.95. For the next six months, that’s the only place you’ll be able to buy it. If you’re located outside the US, you’ll have to pay a significant shipping fee. … Read More
It would be hard to think of something more unfashionable than a book review, but book reviews perform a valuable service. The in-depth expertise required to tackle a demanding subject likely resides in books, but most of those looking to benefit from that expertise necessarily won’t possess the expertise required to evaluate that expertise. (Catch-22!) Book reviews can help people … Read More
Friends, the fifth edition of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting (otherwise known as MSCD5) will be available for purchase from the American Bar Association in mid-April 2023. To echo what a deeply nerdy reader actually said, “I feel excitement in the air!” It has been a long time coming. I started work on it in November 2021. And … Read More
Of the sixty-odd articles I’ve written, one is a real turkey: Revisiting the Ambiguity of “And” and “Or” in Legal Drafting, published in 2006. It flubs the analysis of or. I was subsequently rescued by Rodney Huddleston, titan of linguistics (see this 2020 post), so in A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting, the analysis of ambiguity associated with or … Read More
In a conversation a few years ago with a BigLaw partner—a friend of MSCD—they recalled wistfully the first edition, which gave you relatively concise advice on the basics. Well, they’ll be even more wistful when they see MSCD5, because I’ve added greater detail. A good example is my treatment of our old friend efforts provisions. I’ve revised that chapter to … Read More
