A few months ago someone contacted me about redrafting their organization’s template confidentiality agreement. It was a simple enough matter, and after some back and forth, I was ready to start. Then I had a phone call with a colleague of my initial contact. I soon gathered that this person didn’t have in mind my redrafting the template. Instead, I would … Read More
Via this post by @bobambrogi, I learned that Adobe has made public a 30-page document called The Adobe Legal Department Style Guide, to encourage others to use it and adapt it for their own legal departments and law firms. Here’s why I’m writing about it: This document applies to all In-House Legal Department communication and documents, but has a special focus … Read More
I’ve created a new business, Adams Contracts Consulting LLC. We help companies make their template contracts clearer, more concise, and more effective. We also help companies automate their templates, using ContractExpress. Why a new business? After all, I’ve long had “Consulting” as an item on the menu bar of this site. I’m putting those activities in a new business simply because … Read More
I’ve previously mentioned that on 2 November 2015 I’ll be returning to University College London to do a public “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminar with the UCL Faculty of Laws. Well, registration is now open: go here. Check out toward the bottom of the page testimonials from people who took part in last year’s UCL seminar. And I just came back from doing … Read More
Yesterday I revisited in this post use of sole and exclusive in granting language in a license agreement. Well, we’re not done, because yesterday I saw the following in a contract: Acme hereby grants Widgetco an irrevocable, worldwide, paid up, royalty-free, exclusive license … That caused me to wonder about paid-up (it’s a phrasal adjective, so I’d use a hyphen) and … Read More
To accompany my previous two posts (here and here) on issues relating to language used in governing-law provisions, here’s another: Do you say that the law in question governs the contract or, alternatively, that the contract is governed by the law in question? (This is a context where the passive voice is largely harmless.) Or do you refer to interpretation or … Read More
Recently I expressed to a group of patent lawyers my reluctance to use sole and exclusive in granting language to indicate that the licensor retains or doesn’t retain, respectively, the right to use the intellectual property. But on revisiting MSCD 13.606–10 and this 2012 post, I realized that I haven’t yet offered suitable alternatives. So here goes: In contracts on EDGAR, … Read More
[Updated 16 October 2021: In this 2019 post I consider a law review article that discusses this issue and reaches broadly the same conclusion I do.] [Updated 13 July 2015: In my original post, I proposed not bothering to say in a governing-law provision that the court is to consider just the substantive law of the jurisdiction in question, instead of using … Read More
Like many a teenager in olden times, I had my Beat Generation phase. As far as I can see, it had no demonstrable effect on my life. No Neal Cassady I! But one fragment has somehow stuck in my mind. Here’s what William Burroughs says in the introduction to Naked Lunch: The title means exactly what the words say: naked lunch, … Read More
[Updated 4 April 2018: I’m no longer an advisor to LexCheck (formerly Lit IQ), and the last time I did any work for them was in 2016.] At LegalTech West on Tuesday, July 14, during the session starting 1:30 p.m. PDT entitled “Legal Disruption Lightning Round Two,” Gurinder Sangha will make a five-minute presentation about Lit IQ. Let me tell … Read More
