You can find on this page the roster of cities around the world where I’m doing “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminars in 2020. I’m look forward to the seminars: they’re fun for me and, amazingly enough, those who attend. The seminar business is a tough one: I’m in my fifteenth year of doing these seminars because participants find them valuable and recommend them to their colleagues.
Outside the United States, the cities have stayed pretty much unchanged in recent years. I get wistful thinking of all the major cities in Europe where I’ve never done a public seminar: Paris. Frankfurt. Berlin. Prague. Moscow. Stockholm. Oslo.
Regarding cities in the United States, it’s too bad we’ve had to drop some major cities where I haven’t attracted enough participants to make seminars viable and buzz-worthy.
But here’s how you can arrange a “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminar in your city anyway:
Hire me to do an in-house seminar. Because the participants know each other and work together, in-house seminars can be particularly fun. I would incorporate in my presentation examples drawn from your templates; that makes the discussion all the more relevant. If cost is a factor, a company and its main outside counsel could put a seminar on together. You can find more information about in-house seminars here.
Host a public seminar. If you have a meeting room that seats 30 or more, you could host a public seminar. I might also ask you to buy copies of my book for everyone, provide lunch and refreshments, and do some copying. Your personnel would attend at no cost; others would pay me a fee. I’ve done this sort of seminar with Maersk Line (in Copenhagen), ECE Projektmanagement (in Hamburg), SAP (in Walldorf), and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (in Heidelberg), among others. It would work in the United States too.
Get a trade group to host a seminar. I’ve done plenty of seminars for bar organizations and other trade groups. You could check with a trade group you belong to; they might be interested. If they charge attendees, they would likely charge less than what it costs to attend a public “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminar.
Get a law school to host a seminar. Every year I do a public seminar in London for UCL Faculty of Laws. (Information here.) There’s no reason why I couldn’t work out a similar arrangement with other law schools.
Collect expressions of interest. If you find, oh, 15 people in your U.S. city who would be interested attending a public seminar and paying the $895 (with volume discounts) that Thomson Reuters charges, I’m sure they’d be willing to consider scheduling another seminar.
I invite you to get creative!
