[Update 30 April 2017: In an email exchange with Dan Rubins, CEO of Legal Robot, I learned that the New York Times article doesn’t reflect at all how Legal Robot handles shall. I’m OK with having written my post based on what was in the article, but the shall part was what prompted me to write the post in first … Read More
Go here for an article I posted on LinkedIn today, Be Afraid of Contract Interpretation. Every so often I post a particularly general piece on LinkedIn instead of on this blog, with the notion that something on LinkedIn might catch the attention of people who would never have heard of me otherwise. What I have to say on LinkedIn will generally … Read More
Here are two concluding clauses: The authorized signatures for MICHIGAN and COMPANY below signify their acceptance of the terms of this AGREEMENT. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the parties have indicated their acceptance of the terms of this Agreement by their signatures below on the dates indicated. In both these concluding clauses, the parties say they’re accepting the terms of the contract. … Read More
I just sent my minder at the American Bar Association the manuscript for the fourth edition of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. All I can say is EXPLETIVE DELETED. It took about four months to weave a mass of disparate writings into the text of the third edition, then sand and polish the whole so the seams don’t … Read More
On 23 October I’ll be in Toronto to do a “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminar for Osgoode Professional Development. I’ll follow that on 24 October with my “advanced” seminar entitled “An Intensive Program in the Categories of Contract Language.” To keep it action-packed, it will be shorter than previous versions of this seminar, running from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Go … Read More
An autonomous definition might refer to the part of speech of the defined term. If it does, invariably it’s because one or more related forms of that defined term are used in that contract and are treated as defined terms too. Here are four examples: “Transfer” means, when used as a noun, any voluntary or involuntary, direct or indirect (whether through … Read More
Here’s what a reader said to me in an email: I’m frustrated. Even though I’ve been a lawyer for 21 years, my contract drafting skills are not what they should be for a lawyer with my experience. For example, I’m drafting a termination agreement for a consulting services agreement. A friend and I briefly discussed what should be in it. … Read More
Last week I did three gigs in three days. On Tuesday, at the request of cousin Joshua Stein, I did a one-hour presentation in New York as part of a seminar on real-estate financing. On Wednesday and Thursday, I did two day-long in-house “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminars in the Bay Area. And at each of the three, I had … … Read More
A reader asked me about excluding without limitation. Yes, it’s a thing, unfortunately, or at least enough of a thing to prompt me to look into it. It occurs in 55 contracts filed on the SEC’s EDGAR system in the past year. I’ve included at the bottom of this post extracts from some of those contracts. I don’t understand excluding … Read More
I wrote about search-and-replace glitches in this 2015 post. Well, here’s another one: You might have noticed that I’ve been in an efforts frenzy. As part of reassessing my position on efforts, I searched on EDGAR for a bunch of efforts variants, including the unlikeliest ones I could think of. One of them was commercially efforts. Yeah, sounds crazy, but … Read More
