This week, I gave a presentation to the European Legal English Teachers’ Association (EULETA). Here is what was my last slide (well, apart from the slide with the discount code for MSCD):
I stand by it, but with one important edit: I’d delete the word “only” in the second bullet-point.
This presentation came on the heels of two important articles (if I say so myself). The first, published in April in Corporate Counsel Now (here), relates to my critique of the Norfolk Southern merger agreement. Cumulatively, my critique demonstrates that the law firm in question ignored decades of progress in legal writing in general and contract drafting in particular.
The second article, published this week in Business Law Today (here), clinically dissects a fixture in M&A contracts, agreement and plan of merger, showing it to be, well, silly.
So having been reminded how firmly entrenched the dysfunction is, I was still a little bummed when I did my EULETA presentation.
But in a world of dysfunction, the informed consumer of contract language has a bigger role to play. You’re the one person who knows how to stay out of trouble. You roam the wasteland, doing what you need to do to survive and protect those who need to be protected. You live to see another day and do it all over again.
Yes, you’re Max Rockatansky!
As I say in the EULETA slide, you work at the margins: Creating a rider here. An adjustment there. Discretely neutralizing a glitch that has been in your template for three years.
But let’s delete, in our minds, that “only” in the EULETA slide. It inappropriately diminishes work that consists of the last line defense. In a world of dysfunction, that work has a lot more riding on it than should be the case.
How do you become an informed consumer of contract language? By becoming familiar with A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting, with or without the help of my training. (For more about that, see this 2024 blog post.)
(Now seems a good time to remind you that my next series of Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass starts on 2 June 2026. Go here for more information. If you want a private series for your team, you know where to reach me.)
