I’ve mostly given up policing what passes for the marketplace of ideas—it’s too chaotic. But occasionally the algorithm tells me I might as well say something about something. So now, I’ll offer my thoughts on this post, entitled Canceling the Word “Shall” in Leases, Contracts and Legal Forms, on the Holland & Knight Retail and Commercial Development and Leasing Blog. … Read More
On Wednesday I was pleased to receive an email from Lissa Morris. She participated in a series of Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass, and Wednesday saw the last of the eight weekly one-hour sessions in her series. Her email is below—you’ll see why I found it a tonic. In it, Lissa refers to “Team Adams.” I propose that it’s her way … Read More
LegalSifter Review uses algorithms to review draft contracts to see whether provisions addressing specific contract issues are present or missing. We call our algorithms “Sifters.” In this post, the spotlight is on the Sifter Not Relying on Statements Outside the Contract. This Sifter helps alert sellers to language it would be prudent to include in a contract to reduce the … Read More
I’ve just added four new series of Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass to take us through the end of the year. Here are the five series now available: Starting Tuesday, 13 July 2021, at 8:00 am ET (US) Starting Thursday, 5 August 2021, at 11:00 am ET (US) Starting Wednesday, 8 September 2021, at 11:00 am ET (US) Starting Tuesday, 5 … Read More
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
