I received this cry for help from Canada: I would very much appreciate your help in addressing a bit of nonsense peculiar to Canadian contracts. Like the US, Canada is a federal jurisdiction. Like the US, contract law is a matter of Provincial (or State) jurisdiction. A practice has developed in the choice of law clause in Canadian contracts, which … Read More
A few years ago I did an in-house Drafting Clearer Contracts presentation for a group that included several people who had attended one of my public presentations a couple of years previously. Here’s the gist of a brief discussion we had: Me: Why are your company’s templates still so crappy? Them: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ For a while now I’ve … Read More
I was tempted to do an in-depth post about this EY survey, entitled The General Counsel Imperative: How Does Contracting Complexity Hide Clear Profitability? But the more I looked at it, the less I had to say about it. But this random tidbit grabbed my attention: Establish a contracting center of excellence (CoE). A dedicated team set up in a … Read More
I did these three videos about the Salesforce master subscription agreement. With each video, you have the opportunity to ask LegalSifter for a giveaway. Enough time has passed that I can now make available to you, without even that slight obstacle, the two analyses I produced that we used as giveaways. Go here for a Word document containing (1) six … Read More
In this blog post I display the digital badge I’m implementing for my course Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass. I explain that the digital credentials aren’t intended to indicate a level of competence. Instead, they’re intended to start a conversation. The course already includes quizzes; the issue under discussion now is whether to add to self-assessment the kind of assessment that … Read More
The image above is one of 12 panels from this tweet by Jordan Furlong containing his graphic entitled “Types of Future of Law Paper.” It’s a riff on this xkcd webcomic entitled “Types of Scientific Paper.” Document Assembly Has Underperformed Obviously, for that one panel to work, it has to be grounded in reality. Document assembly is a straightforward technology … Read More
Above is a sample cover slide from my new PowerPoint deck. At the bottom of this post is the cover slide I’ve been using for years, so yes, the new design is a big upgrade. The photo in the cover slide is customizable, so I contemplate changing it for different clients and different kinds of presentations. By itself, a new … Read More
I’ve decided to offer digital credentials—a certificate and a badge—to participants in my course Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass. You’ll be able to click on the certificate to confirm that it’s authentic and get details of the course. And you’ll be able to upload the clickable badge on LinkedIn and elsewhere. The digital badge is in the image above; it was … Read More
Since 2013, I’ve had only one web designer—Selene Bowlby of iDesign Studios. Working with her has been gratifyingly straightforward: I tell her what I want and she builds it, using her technical and design skills to give specific form to my very general wishes. I’ve always been pleased with the results. And in between sporadic rebuilds, she looks after things. … Read More
The engine driving my rebranding (described in this blog post) was my new logo, by my new graphic designer, Gothard. Yes, that’s it, above. (I also have four Drafting Clearer Contracts variants.) I think it’s great. I got it through a contest I ran using 99designs. I chose to do a “Platinum” contest, the most expensive level—I had one shot, … Read More
