With my wife, Joanne, traveling, I was left to my own devices for a couple of days. The only mischief I got up to was experimenting briefly with low-calorie pizza (not to be repeated) and watching a new limited series on Prime Video, Mr. & Mrs. Smith. I found Mr. & Mrs. Smith diverting, mostly because I find Donald Glover … Read More
Yesterday, Lyft issued an outlook mistakenly projecting that its margins would increase by 500 basis points. That was quickly corrected to 50 basis points. (Go here for a Bloomberg item about that.) That mistake prompted lawyer Pat Wallen to do this LinkedIn post about it. I’ve written plenty on this topic, but given the interest generated by Pat’s post, I’ll … Read More
Yesterday, during session 3 of a private series of Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass, we spent almost an hour considering, and coming up with alternatives to, suboptimal verb structures in a set of big-company standard terms. A participant then suggested it wouldn’t be feasible to engage in that sort of surgery when reviewing the endless stream of counterparty draft contracts sent … Read More
I’m doing a private series of Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass for a group from a global company. We’re three-quarters of the way through, so last week I checked in with my contact at the company to see how they were faring. Here’s what he said in his email back: I solicited input from a couple of folks, in particular those … Read More
Tipster extraordinaire Glenn West let me know about the Texas Supreme Court’s opinion in U.S. Polyco, Inc. v. Texas Central Business Lines Corp., issued yesterday (here). Here’s the language at issue (emphasis added): 1.1 TCB Infrastructure Improvements. As used in this Agreement: “TCB Infrastructure Improvements” will mean the following improvements agreed to and shown generally in Exhibit X attached and … Read More
Andrew Stokes is CEO of The Law Machine, “a contracting platform that makes contract content modular so lawyers can automate contracts visually through a drag and drop UI.” I enjoy Andrew’s posts. I noticed his two most recent posts. In this one, he gripes about the notion of “market” contract terms: If ever again a $1000/hour lawyer dares tell me … Read More
The ABA Journal has published my essay entitled What Should We Do with “Nonlawyer”? Go here. I wrote it because I thought polemic on the subject (including a couple of contributions by me) doesn’t tell the whole story. In my essay, I suggest that for two reasons, we can ease up on the indignation over nonlawyer. First, this use of … Read More
A client of the law firm Proskauer Rose has sued the firm for malpractice, seeking $636 million in damages. Robert Adelman alleges that because of a provision mistakenly included in a contract relating to control of a hedge fund, the hedge fund’s manager was able to seize Adelman’s stake in the fund. Adelman’s lawyers allege that Proskauer negligently copy-and-pasted the … Read More
Go here for episode 16 of Gatekeeper’s “Procurement Reimagined,” with host Daniel Barnes. The title is Moving Beyond Cut and Paste: The Criticality of Contract Language with Ken Adams, Chief Content Officer at LegalSifter. Yes, it consists of a chat with yours truly. My thanks to Daniel for keeping the conversation moving!
I noticed the most recent post by Chris Simkins on his Improving Contracts blog. Entitled L2L Contracts: Thinking beyond B2C and B2B, it explores the implications of, well, L2L contracts. What are L2L contracts, you ask? Here’s what Chris says: When I use L2L, I don’t mean a contract between two lawyers, or two law firms. I’m using it to … Read More
