Earlier this month I felt compelled to respond to a critique by Tim Cummins of an article I had co-authored. (See this post.) Tim is head of the International Association for Contract & Commercial Management (IACCM). Since it’s safe to assume that Tim won’t be inviting me over for tea any time soon, there’s nothing preventing me from now commenting … Read More
It’s a little after 4:00 a.m., I’m in a lounge at Bangkok’s airport, and my thoughts have turned to … contracts playbooks. You know—those scripts that tell a company’s contracts professionals how to respond to comments to the company’s draft contracts, or how to respond to the other side’s drafts. In connection with a consulting project I’m working on, a … Read More
Tweets by @Jeena_Cho and @CherylStephens alerted me to this item by J. Kim Wright. The title is Conscious Contracts: Bringing Purpose and Values into Legal Documents. Go ahead and read it; it’s short. I’ll wait. You’re back? Good. In her tweet, Cheryl asked me whether there was room in my world for this concept. Well, I find what Kim has … Read More
Yesterday I had an exchange on Twitter with Pam Chestek, aka @pchestek, proprietor of the Property, Intangible blog. (You’ll see next month my article that sprang from a fruitful discussion I had with Pam a few months ago.) Yesterday’s exchange was prompted by my post on paid-up and royalty-free (here), but it strayed into the role of clarity in contracts. … Read More
Via this post by @bobambrogi, I learned that Adobe has made public a 30-page document called The Adobe Legal Department Style Guide, to encourage others to use it and adapt it for their own legal departments and law firms. Here’s why I’m writing about it: This document applies to all In-House Legal Department communication and documents, but has a special focus … Read More
Last year, while I was at a prominent law firm to do a seminar, someone from the law firm emphasized to me that they don’t use standard templates. Instead, they want their junior lawyers to figure out for themselves what should be in a given contract. I thought of that when I read the following in Milgrim on Licensing, at § 10.00: … Read More
Last month I noticed with interest this article by Carol McAlice Currie in the Statesman Journal. It’s entitled “House Passes Bill to Standardize Oregon Contracts.” I recommend that you read the entire article, but here’s the gist of it: Building on a promise to bring more transparency and accountability to government, Rep. Nancy Nathanson delivered on it this week when the … Read More
[Updated June 30, 2015: Here’s an update from Blake: In our job search, we stated that knowledge of MSCD was a “preferred qualification.” Out of dozens of qualified applicants, we narrowed the pool to four people. We gave all four candidates a “homework” assignment of drafting a contract in accordance with MSCD. (We assigned the candidates random numbers and graded … Read More
Yesterday Tim Cummins of the International Association for Contract & Commercial Management posted this item on his blog. It’s on the need for change in contracts, a subject Tim writes about regularly. Tim is used to my nagging, so I permit myself the following thoughts. Tim’s post was prompted by a recent IACCM webinar on the new ASC606 revenue recognition standard. … Read More
I noted with interest this post by Ken Grady on Seyfarth Shaw’s Seytlines blog, particularly as last year I did a Q&A with Ken on this blog (here). Ken’s post is about quality in contracting. He starts by discussing the limitations of determining quality by proxy. As he says, “Trusting the brand, versus trusting metrics that measure desired characteristics, is … Read More
