Joan Heminway, professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law, sent the following inquiry to me and one of her colleagues: In commenting on student work, I have noticed over the years a decrease in student use of quotation marks around defined terms, especially when defined in inside parentheses. I note that while investment bankers, e.g., do not typically … Read More
I understand that a law firm would regard it as a good thing if its clients, in between big deals, were to have occasion to get in touch with it every so often. That sort of low-threshold contact would reduce the odds of clients forgetting about the law firm and the stellar service it has provided. That in turn would … Read More
A participant at today’s “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminar in Minneapolis mentioned how she includes in her drafts a footnote alerting the reader that it was drafted so as to comply with recommendations contained in A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. She does so with the aim of dissuading people from asking her to restore suboptimal usages of the sort … Read More
At today’s Minneapolis “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminar, one of the participants mentioned how his company has licensed ContractExpress—the technology that powers Koncision—to automate their confidentiality agreements. That prompted the following thought: Anyone who wants to use ContractExpress to automate their drafting of confidentiality agreements would be missing out if they don’t explore licensing Koncision’s confidentiality-agreement template too. You’d be getting … Read More
Use of there is or there are in a sentence is not only more often than not a sign of clutter: it also allows drafters to play, presumably unwittingly, the game of hide-the-actor. Consider the hot-off-the-presses case of Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles v. National Safety Commission, Inc., which a reader just told me about (PDF copy … Read More
A reader told me about the Ohio Supreme Court’s June 2011 decision in Sunoco, Inc. (R&M) v. Toledo Edison Co. (go here for a PDF copy). The issue was whether Sunoco could use a most-favored-nation provision in its contract with the Toledo Edison Company to require that Toledo Edison extend the term of the contract to match the term of … Read More
[Updated October 31, 2011, to reflect revised pricing.] Fellow blogger Rush Nigut (www.rushonbusiness.com) recently started a company called NotifyWorks to help lawyers improve their client relationships. (A transactional lawyer turning entrepreneurial—what a concept!) I knew that Rush had in mind that NotifyWorks would be relevant to the contract process, so I asked him a few questions. Here’s our exchange: Ken: … Read More
When in a contract you want to specify a fee to be paid, it’s redundant to use the phrase flat fee or fixed fee: The Bank agrees to pay RP Financial a fixed fee of $37,500 for preparation and delivery of the original appraisal report, plus reimbursable expenses. During the Term, DigitalGlobe shall pay Consultant a fixed fee of $10,000 per month for up … Read More
When someone wants to discuss my giving expert testimony in a dispute over the meaning of part of a contract, it’s a safe bet that the confusion over meaning will involve one or other (or both) of the following kinds of ambiguity: Syntactic ambiguity, which arises from uncertainty over what part of a sentence a given phrase modifies, or what … Read More
My thanks go to a Penn Law student who reminded me of the following categories-of-contract-language nuance: Consider this provision: During the Due Diligence Period, Acme may on one or more occasions cause its representatives to inspect and copy any Widget Documents located at Widgetco’s offices, on condition that they do so during Widgetco’s business hours and give Widgetco at least … Read More
