The ACC Docket has just published (here) my article Fixing Your Contracts: What Training in Contract Drafting Can and Can’t Do. My co-author is Chris Lemens, a longtime reader and commenter. I have no particular gloss to put on this article. If any thoughts come to mind, by all means put them in the comments.
Remember my article Bamboozled by a Comma: The Second Circuit’s Misdiagnosis of Ambiguity in American International Group, Inc. v. Bank of America Corp.? Well, it’s now in print, in The Scribes Journal of Legal Writing. Go here for a PDF. The citation would be to 16 Scribes J. Legal Writing 45 (2014–15). The article seeks to debunk a variant of the principle of interpretation known as … Read More
Ah, the marketplace of ideas! You get to set up your soapbox on any street corner and do your darnedest to plug your ideas. May the best ideas win! But even the rough-and-tumble of the marketplace of ideas has a code of conduct. For one thing, you don’t get to have your ideas prevail over the other guy’s by putting … Read More
My article Eliminating the Phrase Represents and Warrants from Contracts is now available. It’s in the latest issue of Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law. Go here for a PDF. This article shows that it’s pointless and confusing to use represents or warrants in a contract to introduce statements of fact. It recommends that instead you use states to introduce … Read More
Go here to see Top Ten Tips in Drafting and Negotiating International Contracts, co-authored by me and René Mario Scherr, Tetra Pak’s Regional General Counsel, South Asia, East Asia & Oceania. If that link doesn’t work for you, go here for a PDF. You’re welcome. I met René about seven years ago, at one of my seminars. We’ve kept in … Read More
[Updated October 14, 2014: Go here for a PDF copy. Incidentally, I haven’t yet received any feedback about this article, but I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t have expected to hear from anyone who endorses the approach reflected in English caselaw, as I think I’ve comprehensively debunked it.] The 30 September 2014 issue of the English periodical Solicitors Journal contains my article … Read More
The Korean periodical the Legal Times has published the first part of my article English-Language Contracts: Reducing the Clutter and Confusion (go here). [Update: Go here for the second part.] What’s novel about this article is that it’s in Korean. It had to be, if I wanted it published in a Korean legal periodical. My thanks to Jacki Noh for the translation. … Read More
The current issue of The Australian Corporate Lawyer—the journal of the Australian Corporate Lawyers Association—contains my article Banishing Shall from Business Contracts: Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater (PDF copy here). What it has to say won’t come as a surprise to regular readers of this blog, but I expect that it will come as a surprise to plenty of … Read More
It used to be that I’d wait impatiently for some article that I’d written to be published. “Perhaps this time,” I’d think, “they’ll sit up and take notice!” It’s probably a good sign that I plumb forgot that my most recent article was published last week. It’s entitled Termination-on-Bankruptcy Provisions: Some Proposed Language. It’s in the most recent issue of … Read More
Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law has just published my book-review essay Dysfunction in Contract Drafting: The Causes and a Cure. (Go here for a PDF copy.) It’s a critique of the book The Three and a Half Minute Transaction: Boilerplate and the Limits of Contract Design, by Mitu Gulati and Robert E. Scott. I know what you’re thinking: “Law … Read More
