In this post last month, I offered my revised “force majeure” language, then revised it further as it was brutalized by readers. *sobs* In case force majeure hasn’t outstayed its welcome among you all, I’d like to run an idea by you. The language in the previous post begins as follows: If a Force Majeure Event prevents a party from … Read More
I noted with interest the article Lock-Up Creep. It’s by Steven M. Davidoff, the least of whose accomplishments is the fact that he’s my webcast co-presenter, and Christina M. Sautter, of LSU Law Center. The article is in the most recent issue of the Journal of Corporation Law, but currently the best online source for it is SSRN (here). What are lock-ups? … Read More
[Updated September 26, 2013] Last week was a quiet one, at least in terms of my online activities, as I spent most of it in Florida, where I gave two “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminars for a company. There was a give-and-take during the seminars. I particularly like it when someone at a seminar spots a nuance that I’ve had at … Read More
Last week the law-and-technology claque on Twitter was abuzz with news of Shake, an iPhone app that allows you to “Create, sign and send legally binding agreements in seconds.” Here’s Shake’s statement of purpose: Think back to the last time you signed a legal agreement. Did it stress you out? Did it make you feel uncomfortable? Did it cost you … Read More
Thanks to @carolynelefant and this post on Open Law Lab, I learned of the “Law Design Jam” being held on October 11, 2013, at Stanford University. Go here for the invitation. The tagline for the event is “Legal contracts, licenses and policies are now long, dull, difficult and boring documents. Come change that!” Here’s how the event is described: A Legal Design Jam is a design-driven hackathon to … Read More
With the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent holding on the Defense of Marriage Act, my thoughts turned to use in contracts of the words husband, wife, and spouse. But I wasn’t about to tackle that on my lonesome, no siree. Instead, I asked Dan Schwatz—he of the Connecticut Employment Law Blog—for his thoughts. My opening question for Dan was whether use … Read More
[Update: For my definitive take on this subject, see my article Eliminating the Phrase Represents and Warrants from Contracts, 16 Tennessee Journal of Business Law 203 (2015).] Yes, I know that I’m getting tiresome, they way I harp on about represents and warrants, like a dog worrying a bone. But I have a new element to add to my analysis. At … Read More
Today’s New York Times contains a column by Thomas Friedman (here) about innovation at a General Electric research lab. Here’s what Friedman says about such research centers generally: These centers are places where scientists and engineers from dozens of nationalities are using collaboration and crowd-sourcing to push out the boundaries of medical, manufacturing and material sciences, where possibilities seem infinite, … Read More
Given my recent post on German speakers and will (here), I was intrigued to have a participant at yesterday’s “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminar in Boston ask me why Germans are so eager to use the verb guarantee in contracts. I’m not sure what use of guarantee that participant was referring to. Guarantees plus noun or guarantees that plus verb? (For … Read More
The other day I heard about the Series Seed documents for the first time. What, you ask, are the Series Seed documents? This is how they’re described on the Series Seed website: The Series Seed Documents are a standardized set of documents that can be quickly and easily deployed for a seed investment: to help get a company financed properly, legally, … Read More
