Recently I was interviewed by Louise Kulbicki for her Study Legal English podcast. That episode is now out. You can click on it at the bottom of this post, and it’s also available through her site, here. (It’s Louise’s 99th episode of her podcast. By my standards, that’s a lot of episodes!) The interview clocks in at just under an … Read More
I’m the how-to-say-it-clearly guy, and I’m pleased with my lot. But it follows that except with respect to basic commercial provisions, I don’t tackle what you should say in a contract. That’s why I take my hat off to Law Insider for this installment in what appears to be a podcast series called The Contract Teardown. It features my friend … Read More
[Updated 6 July 2023: Today’s blog post (here) addresses something I omitted from this post, so until further notice it’s my definitive take on nonlawyer!] Before doing today’s post on nonlawyers helping with contract drafting (here), I was aware of grumbling about the word nonlawyer. I’m entirely willing to revisit the implications of words I use. For example, after being … Read More
No one owes it to me to take me on or to engage in discussion. But after a certain point, the silence becomes deafening. This past week I did a blog post entitled Many Judges Are Bad at Textual Interpretation. What Do We Do About It? The first half consists of my critique of textual interpretation offered in a recent … Read More
Plenty of you appreciate what I do. I know that because I hear from you. And plenty of you have given me written testimonials; for example, go here, here, here, and here. But I’d like to help foster more of a sense of community—yes, a community of contract-language nerds, but still a community—by having you share your impressions in a more, uh, intimate form. … Read More
Ken: I’m here with Mark Anderson, an English lawyer who specializes in IP transactions. He’s also a blogger and the co-author or editor of too many books related to contracts. I’ve mentioned him plenty on my blog, and we’ve done some interesting stuff together—just search for his name on my blog. Mark: I see you exhumed that photo from 2014. … Read More
[Updated 1:40 a.m. 21 February 2020 to expand the analysis to address additional text in the screenshot Warren tweeted.] On 19 February, the Nation published this article by Ken Klippenstein about the Bloomberg campaign’s confidentiality agreement. The article contained this link to a copy of the confidentiality agreement. All I have to say about it is what I said on … Read More
Yesterday I saw this tweet: Trash a person, an idea, an institution – how easy, how lazy. Nothing genius about being obnoxious, nor cool about bullying. Nothing gained except attention, a sport for truculents, a frenzy for trolls. All diminished. Hollow, shallow and nothing whatsoever to do with leadership. — Paul Gilbert (@LBCWiseCounsel) February 18, 2020 I’ll now proceed to … Read More
Translator Elizabeth Adams posted in the LinkedIn group A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting (here) the image below. I had seen that image previously, in the context of discussion of whether buying a bag of grapes medical marijuana makes you party to a contract. Yeah, that’s interesting, but Elizabeth pointed out something waaaaay more interesting: What’s with the bizarro quotation … Read More
All my blather wouldn’t signify much without people willing to make use of my recommendations. One such person is Kevin Heaney, partner in the Billings, Montana, commercial department of the law firm Crowley Fleck PLLP. That’s him to the right. Kevin attended one of my “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminars, and he’s made no secret of the fact that he finds my stuff … Read More
