The latest addition to the American Bar Association’s series of “ABA Book Briefs” podcasts is an interview with yours truly. In it, I talk for ten minutes about MSCD and some current issues in contract drafting. Click here to listen to it. Regular readers of this blog will find that the podcast doesn’t contain any earth-shattering secrets. But it does … Read More
Last year the New York Law Journal published my article “Copyright and the Contract Drafter.” I’d now like to revisit who owns copyright in a contract, outside counsel or the client. To set the scene, here’s an extract of my article: A client asks its law firm to draft a form of agreement for a new kind of transaction. The … Read More
In Provident Bank v. Tenn. Farmers Mut. Ins. Co., 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 10671 (6th Cir. May 2, 2007), the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit considered the meaning of the word “foreclosure.” (Click here for a copy of this case.) Owners of a home in Tennessee obtained a mortgage on their home from plaintiff bank and insured the … Read More
IACCM‘s email updates are a reliable source of interesting leads, and the April update was no exception, in that it mentioned EchoSign, a company that offers a “signature automation solution” of the same name. Here’s how EchoSign (the product) works: You email a contract for signature through EchoSign. EchoSign automatically adds a machine-readable fax cover sheet bearing an EchoSign fax … Read More
A few days ago, in a comment to my post on justified text, reader j-lon had, in part, this to say: Actually, a lot of stuff in your book is [a tough sell to people sometimes]. Much of it makes sense to me, and I agree with it. But I also spent a number of years teaching legal writing, so … Read More
Late last year I created the “Software” page of this site to describe how the Numbering Assistant—a popular paragraph-numbering utility offered by Payne Consulting Group—has added to its preloaded enumeration schemes the “articles” and “no articles” versions of the enumeration scheme recommended in MSCD. The Numbering Assistant offers, at a nominal price, a painless way for any drafter, and any … Read More
In most printed text that I read, whether in books, magazines, or newspapers, the margins are justified. Here’s how James Felici, The Complete Manual of Typography (2003), defines “justified margins”: justified margins A text alignment in which the type in each line of a column completely fills the measure. This creates straight, (usually) vertical margins on both left and right. … Read More
In a previous post on this blog, I discussed the distinction between conditions and obligations. I said that if you express conditions using language associated with obligations, you shouldn’t be surprised if a court concludes that what you had thought was a condition is in fact an obligation. A recent case, Cumberland Farms, Inc. v. Rian Realty, Ltd., 2007 U.S. … Read More
Because so much litigation has its roots in deficient drafting, I keep half an eye on new case law, and I can be counted on to leap on anything that has a bearing one of my pet subjects. But I suspect that most cases that arise out of poorly drafted contracts don’t involve hot-button drafting issues such as the meaning … Read More
Given the attention I’ve been paying lately to my public seminars, my redrafting department—me—has asked for some airtime. Whoever you are, it’s a very safe bet that the contracts you work with could do with some significant help. As one of my services, I redraft clients’ contracts. By eliminating the broad range of problems that afflict contract prose, I make … Read More
