Here’s my favorite law-conference anecdote: I’m on a panel. The topic of represents and warrants comes up, as it tends to. Another panel member is unimpressed by what I have to say. As his way of resolving the matter, he asks imperiously that a copy of Black’s Law Dictionary be brought to him, and he proceeds to read aloud the definition … Read More
The word material and the phrase material adverse change haven’t featured much on this blog in recent years. That’s mostly because MSCD chapter 9 covers the subject pretty comprehensively, and because there haven’t been any recent developments of particular interest. But today I finally got around to reading, after a year, this 2015 article in the Wall Street Journal about alternative … Read More
Readers with a long memory will remember this 2014 post about a “quick reference” analysis of the categories of contract language prepared by a seminar participant. Well, after almost three years, I’ve come up with my own version, or at least a first draft of it. Go here for a PDF. (The “Reference” column is for citations to MSCD; I’ll … Read More
This from a reader: For documents that I have drafted using your style manual, I do not get comments from clients or other lawyers saying, “Wow, this is so much clearer and easier to read!” So I don’t even have anecdotal evidence to support your approach. My own experience, however, is that it saves me time when I review a … Read More
The first extract below is from a contract I’m redrafting; the second extract is my version. … that permits the disclosure by Institution to the Sponsor and the Sponsor’s employees, agents, and independent contractors and use by the Sponsor and the Sponsor’s employees, agents, and independent contractors of data collected from the Study subject. … that permits the Institution to disclose to … Read More
Via @thecontractsguy I learned of this article in the National Law Review. It discusses East Texas Copy Systems, Inc. v. Player, No. 06-16-00035-CV, 2016 WL 6638865, at *1 (Tex. App. Nov. 10, 2016), an opinion of the Texas Court of Appeals (opinion here). Here’s what happened: An individual by the name of Jason Player sold his business to East Texas Copy Systems, … Read More
Yesterday I saw this article on JDSupra. It’s entitled Merger and Purchase Agreements Governed by Maryland Law: “Best Efforts”, and it’s by Scott Wilson of the law firm Miles & Stockbridge. Consider the following extract: The most commonly utilized terms are “best efforts,” “reasonable best efforts” and “commercially reasonable efforts.” Practitioners understand these terms on a sliding scale with “best efforts” … Read More
Today a reader suggested to me that lawyers “use complexity as a comfort blanket.” That got me to thinking about what makes contracts complicated. First, what does “complexity” mean? I suggest it can mean two things. First, that something is sufficiently technical that it requires special training to be able to understand it. And second, that something has sufficient moving parts … Read More
Recently I had occasion to revisit an issue I thought long settled. Because it involves reader comprehension generally, I took the liberty of buttonholing people involved in legal writing but not contract drafting. Here’s what I asked them: Below are two sentences. The second is the definition of a key defined term used in the first. Necessarily, one has to come … Read More
My enumeration schemes are an important part of my repertoire. There’s the one in MSCD, then there’s the hanging-indent scheme I unleashed in this 2015 post. But despite my control-freakery, I’ve not paid a lot of attention to two aspects of my scheme, namely point size and spacing. I went with the Word default, which was then Calibri 11 point, … Read More
