Are you familiar with Eugene Healy? He’s a “brand strategy consultant.” His short videos on trends in branding somehow manage to be relevant to contracts.
Although I’m sure most of his readers are found elsewhere, he deigns to post on LinkedIn. This post is about how “It’s time to stop blaming AI for slop. It’s everywhere in modern life.”
That’s certainly been my experience with contracts. I’ve built my career on chronicling the pervasive dysfunction of mainstream contract drafting. “Dysfunction” is a bloodless word, so I have no objection to calling it “slop” instead.
My two most recent articles offer a compelling snap shot of the M&A version of slop. There’s my April 2026 article Merger Agreements Are Poorly Drafted, in Corporate Counsel Now. It’s about my analysis of the Norfolk Southern merger agreement, which is slop from beginning to end, although it was drafted by the one of the prestige M&A law firms.
And there’s my article Fixing the Problem That Is “Agreement and Plan of Merger”, published this month in Business Law Today. It’s about how the standard title used for merger agreements doesn’t make sense.
The thing about contracts slop is that it is, to use Eugene’s phrase, a “defining aesthetic” of contracts. Consistent with that, I’ve found over the years that overwhelmingly, organizations have no interest in fixing their contracts. My experience isn’t unique: contacts in the AI world tell me that their clients aren’t interested in improving their contracts.
Paradoxically, fixing contracts is now easier to achieve than it has ever been. For one thing, we now have, in A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting, comprehensive guidelines for the “Modern Precise” style of contract drafting. (See this post for more about that.) And with Adams Contracts, we have a proof-of-principle demonstration of how highly customizable contract templates can be used in the broader market.
I don’t know what explains the intransigence. It might be a function of conformity or groupthink. Or it might reflect a general ill-informed view that for purposes of the bottom line, the difference between optimal contracts and slop contracts is insignificant.
I draw a distinction between organizations and individuals. The constituency for MSCD is primarily individuals, even if my client is an organization. For individuals, the working life with contracts is dreary and precarious if you don’t have the means, or any incentive, to work to make things better.
I’m not naive enough to expect a sea change in how organizations approach contracts. But periodically, organizations find they have to make a fresh start with contracts. That’s the constituency I’m looking to serve. If you find yourself in that position and want to discuss your options, email me at kadams@adamsdrafting.com. Now’s a good time for that kind of conversation.
