During the Academy Awards show last Sunday, the “Best Actress” winner Frances McDormand unleashed on the world the phrase “inclusion rider.” That prompted a tsunami of chatter on the subject, including this by the Washington Post and this by Vanity Fair. But I was interested in the rider itself, not explanations. So I asked around, and I asked on Twitter, but … Read More
You don’t have to be a physicist to experience the force of gravity. Similarly, I’m only a casual student of inertia, but I’ve long grappled with it. Casey Flaherty is a serious observer of inertia. I’ve returned several times to the following in this post: My most obvious error has been predicting the pace of change. While there is sufficient … Read More
Does contract prose matter? Of course it does. Even if you assume that the parties have notionally agreed on the terms of the deal, how you express those terms in a contract can determine how that transaction fares. But many people who work with contracts don’t realize that. Some might be contract managers who regard contract prose as a lawyer … Read More
A participant at a recent “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminar sent me an email saying how much they had enjoyed the seminar. They went on to say that “incorporating the concepts into our templates and drafting will require a slow, steady cultural change.” Regardless of whether cultural change has to be slow and steady, I suggest that it doesn’t reflect reality … Read More
Tim Cummins is the head of the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM). Over the years I’ve discussed with Tim the future of contracting. After a recent exchange of emails, we decided try a more formal approach. We agreed to address on our respective blogs the following proposition: We want new technologies to sweep away traditional contracting, so … Read More
You’re general counsel of Widgetco, the world’s leading supplier of widgets. When anyone needs widgets, they come to you! But you’re also a big buyer of widgets. The primary raw material for widgets is … widgets! You have one contract template for selling widgets and another for buying widgets. How do they differ? Bear in mind we’re not talking about, say, … Read More
From a reader: I can usually get opposing counsel to shut up by pointing to your blog or book. This is what progress looks like.
I’m delighted that on 5 November 2018 I’ll be doing another “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminar in London for UCL Faculty of Laws. For more information, go here. I seem to be making inroads in the UK market. For example, go here for my Practical Law Company video with Daphne Perry; go here for a recording of the 7 November 2017 panel … Read More
When Thomson Reuters told me about how a Contract Express client, the Nevada law firm McDonald Carano, has gone about automating contracts, I volunteered to write about it—case studies make a nice change from free-floating speculation. So here’s my Q&A with Rob Sawyer, IT director at McDonald Carano. (That’s him in the photo to the right.) Ken: Hi Rob. Please … Read More
File this under “Better late than never.” Today a reader told me they couldn’t find online anywhere the table of contents of my book The Structure of M&A Contracts. That was an oversight on my part, so here it is. For more about the book, go here. If you can tolerate the extra hoops you have to jump through, I … Read More
