Yesterday, after a seminar for a group from one of the major US law firms, a partner mentioned to me that clients are increasingly asking that the law firm draft contracts more clearly.
I didn’t get any details, but I suspect that clients make this request when the contracts being drafted are commercial contracts. For mergers-and-acquisitions and other bet-the-company work, clients are likely hands-off. But perhaps clients make this request less often than you might think, in that companies seem to do most of their commercial contracts themselves.
A simple way for a client to make this sort of request would to ask that their contracts be drafted consistent with the guidelines in A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting.
Has anyone had experience with this sort of client request, from either the client or the law-firm perspective?
