In the early days of the pandemic, the fortunate among us had the luxury of wondering what to do with themselves in isolation. It seems that for many, the answer was, “Baking!” In particular, Ooni pizza ovens have been selling like crazy. If you find yourself in the company of people who own an Ooni pizza oven, be prepared for … Read More
In this July 2020 post I discussed a feature I called “delimiting commas in coordination.” It’s a subtle topic, and over time I realized that my post wasn’t as clear as it might be. So now I permit myself take two *** This post considers a feature of comma use that might not be clear enough to rely on to … Read More
It’s time for me to revisit what verb tense to use in a conditional clause. It’s OK, no need to thank me! The following examples fall into two groups, those that relate to a moment in time and those that relate to a period of time. (In the examples, the conditional clause is the part beginning with If; the matrix … Read More
A few months ago I noticed that the Georgetown Law Journal had published a student note entitled Is This Really The Best We Can Do? American Courts’ Irrational Efforts Clause Jurisprudence And How We Can Start To Fix It. It’s by Charles Thau, who has now graduated. Hi Charles, and congratulations on the note! My only reason for mentioning this … Read More
Sporadically I get feedback from people who have taken my online course Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass. Today the professional-development person at a law firm said to me in an email, “We’ve signed up a few of our associates this year for your Masterclass sessions with great feedback.” And here’s the review someone just posted: This is a great class. It … Read More
Today the ACC Docket published my article with Michael Fleming entitled Reviewing Business Contracts: What to Look For and How to Look for It. Michael and I go way back. He was one of the first commenters on this blog. If you have any comments or think we missed something, we’d be happy to hear it.
In this April 2017 blog post I unleashed on the world my chart showing the different components of efforts provisions. Well, it’s time to add another column to that baby, unfortunately. That’s because I followed up on something I buried in this September 2019 post on the LegalSifter blog, namely an instance of the phrase mediation efforts. That offered the … Read More
Hell is other people’s reviews. In October I bought a copy of The Joy of Pizza, by Dan Richer with Katie Parla. Richer is owner of the restaurant Razza, a noted pizza joint in Jersey City. Parla is a food writer and cookbook author based in Italy. After buying it, I looked at some reviews on Amazon. I quickly spotted … Read More
Defined terms add value—they allow you to state a concept more concisely and consistently than you might otherwise. But they come at a cost: Using an autonomous definition breaks up reading—you force the reader to read both the autonomous definition and the related provision. Integrated definitions add a bit of clutter in the form of the defined-term parenthetical. All the … Read More
[Updated 9 May 2022: This post was rendered obsolete by this April 2022 post.] One consequence of my not doing deals is that I have little occasion to consider what effect, if any, e-signing has on the wording and format of contracts. As far as I can tell, DocuSign works with whatever signature blocks you have. The only implication I … Read More
