Yesterday I was reminded of a contract-drafting competition for law students. It’s run by the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research in Hyderabad, India, in association with the law firm Ashurst. Go here for some background information, and go here for the fact-pattern and rules. I like the idea of a contract-drafting competition. It would, in a small way, help … Read More
Use of shall in contracts will remain a topic of discussion. Today’s entry is this post on IP Draughts by Mark Anderson. It summarizes the current state of play. And it mentions that I’m in favor of using shall for contract obligations, and only contract obligations. I actually recommend an even narrower use than that—use shall only to impose an … Read More
Do yourselves a favor and strike in no way in favor of does not or will not, as in the following examples: Borrower hereby agrees that this Amendment in no way acts [read does not act] as a release or relinquishment of the Liens and rights securing payments of its Obligations. … and such holding shall in no way [read will not] affect the validity or … Read More
Welcome to The Koncise Drafter’s first-ever caption contest! I thought it high time that I let my readers indulge their sense of humor (or snark)—I invite you to submit in the comments your proposed caption to the following photograph. Allow me to take the first crack, off the top of my head: “Cleary Gottlieb associate responsible for drafting the Google–Motorola … Read More
As I announced in this blog post, we’re now accepting nonlawyers as Koncision customers. But if you’re not a lawyer and you suspect that you’d benefit from a lawyer’s input while completing the questionnaire for our confidentiality-agreement template, here’s how that could be arranged: You could ask your lawyer to complete the questionnaire and generate the output document, for a … Read More
I think of relative value as being a function of cost in relation to benefit. Koncision isn’t giving away the confidentiality-agreement template. To some, that might make Koncision all too conventional an offering. But consider the cost-benefit relationship. Koncision would allow you to quickly create a confidentiality agreement with state-of-the-art substance and unmatched clarity. Furthermore, it would be tailored to … Read More
We’ve made several changes to Koncision. They’re significant enough that we’re describing them, collectively, as “Koncision 2.0”: Anyone may now use Koncision—not just lawyers. We’ve added a new subscription option: for $500, you may use our confidentiality-agreement template for purposes of copying language to update your own Word templates. (We’ve also increased to $100 from $50 the cost of subscribing … Read More
In a comment to this post, reader Westmorlandia offered the following: I usually prefer “on behalf of” when talking about execution, as otherwise some lawyer will try to argue that a contract signed through agency (almost always the case with companies) was not signed “by” the company. So, the question is, would there be any benefit to saying “signed on … Read More
For a couple of years I used my Wacom Graphire Wireless tablet to annotate PowerPoint slides during my seminars. (I wrote about it in this 2009 post on the AdamsDrafting blog.) It doesn’t have a screen—instead, it has a flat surface on which I wrote with a pen-like stylus, with my scribbles appearing on the projected image of my laptop … Read More
Any law firm looking to put its contract drafting on an efficient footing will face challenges. (I discuss them in this article.) But slightly different considerations might come into play if you’re a solo transactional lawyer. That’s something I decided to explore with the following three volunteers: Abe Sadie: Abe was a colleague in my BigLaw days; last year went … Read More
