The image below is from my repost of a LinkedIn post by Chris Lemens, who has been reading my stuff for as long as I have written stuff.
What prompted my repost was two comments Chris added to this LinkedIn post by Nada Alnajafi:
So Chris makes it explicit—the simplest way to demonstrate your value to Chris would be to rely on my work and Glenn’s work. (I can’t see any reason to make that and an or.)
That makes sense. My beat is the building blocks of contract language; Glenn deals mostly in entire provisions. And even where we overlap—for example, in our analyses of consequential damages—our approaches are different but broadly compatible.
Why do I mention all this? Because it’s long been evident that some people making hiring decisions see value in hiring people familiar with A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting.
In this 2017 blog post, I quote an email I received from a reader:
I was interviewing for a new job 6 months ago and mentioned I am a big MSCD fan. The GC said “That is the most impressive thing you could have said.” Needless to say, I got the job. THANK YOU!
And this 2021 blog post features a tweet in which the company Patreon says that the skills and experiences it will look for in a candidate include “Own a copy of ‘A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting’ by Ken Adams.”
At a minimum, being able to speak knowledgeably about MSCD would give you something interesting to talk about in an interview.
Many of us are willing to rely on whatever the copy-and-paste machine or AI happens to deliver, and that doubtless includes many people making hiring decisions. But for reasons I’ve droned on at length about—most recently in this blog post—I’d much rather work with someone who values specialized knowledge. Someone like Chris.
