Last month I ran the following idea by my Twitter followers: Pondering a blog post: "Ten Signs Your Contract Template Is F*cked." — Ken Adams (@AdamsDrafting) October 10, 2020 It met with sufficient approval that I prepared a blog post entitled “Your Shit’s Fucked Up: 7 Signs of Dysfunctional Contract Templates.” Well, I regret to say that it won’t see … Read More
Last week I tweeted this, or something close to it: “When I want authoritative contract-drafting advice, I look to litigators.” I was aware that it was unclear whether I was being sincere or snarky. After a few hours, I decided that being gratuitously confusing was unhelpful, so I deleted the tweet. But the replies to my tweet remain. Some endorse … Read More
This is the first of two posts prompted by what a reader said in a recent exchange of emails. Here’s one thing they said: On more than one occasion, a colleague has used the term “academic” as a pejorative to describe my interest in an issue. For example, “well, let’s try to stay away from just academic discussions and concentrate … Read More
In today’s post about how those who aren’t lawyers can help with contract drafting (here), I advance an idea I don’t recall having seen expressed before. It hardly seems a revolutionary idea, but I thought it appropriate to hear what other had to say about it. So I reached out to a handful of my connections, some long-standing, others more … Read More
Recently I tweeted this: Legal builds contracts because lawyers are good at claiming turf. Contracts are business documents: that they're legally enforceable and contain dispute resolution provisions isn't a reason to make them a legal fiefdom. Give them to people skilled in deals and contract language. — Ken Adams (@AdamsDrafting) August 16, 2020 I’ll now explain myself in more than … Read More
The legal profession has a love-hate relationship with technology. On the one hand, lawyers are, uh, challenged when it comes to using basic technology. And technology vendors tend to grouse that selling to lawyers is a hassle. On the other hand, the legal profession is prone to spasms of enthusiasm over technology. It periodically throws money at some new technology, … Read More
Recently I posted on LinkedIn two comments (here and here) regarding the distinction between simplifying a contract and making it clearer. In those comments I say that simplification relates to what you say in a contract whereas clarity relates to how you say it. What you say falls on a spectrum between simple and complex; how you say it falls … Read More
Recently I noticed blog posts written by thoughtful people under the auspices of prominent names. One is The Evolution to Modern Legal, by Jason Barnwell; it’s on the Legal Evolution blog, which is edited by Bill Henderson. The other is is here; the other is We Need a Legal Revolution, Not Reformation, by Leigh Vickery; it’s a guest post on … Read More
On occasion, someone who doesn’t agree with me on a given issue will blurt out, “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and ….” Or if they wish to be more low-key about it, they might simply observe that experienced drafters take a different approach. In some activities, being experienced is a suitable proxy for being good. If I were … Read More
Recently I noticed Mark Anderson’s post entitled Why Do We Tolerate Bad Templates? Spoiler alert: Mark says it’s because people like what they’re used to and because they assume that if they haven’t encountered problems yet they won’t in the future. Bad I’ll now explore the assumption underlying Mark’s post—that many, or most, templates are bad. Is that the case? … Read More
