In a previous blog post (here), I offer thoughts on a law review article, Tara Chowdhury, Faith Chudkowski & Mitu Gulati, The Form Knows Best, 79 U. of Miami L. Rev. 607 (2025). The same issue of that law review contains Glenn West’s response to that article—The Form Doesn’t Know Anything: A Response to Chowdhury, Chudkowski & Gulati, 79 U. … Read More
I noticed the most recent post by Chris Simkins on his Improving Contracts blog. Entitled L2L Contracts: Thinking beyond B2C and B2B, it explores the implications of, well, L2L contracts. What are L2L contracts, you ask? Here’s what Chris says: When I use L2L, I don’t mean a contract between two lawyers, or two law firms. I’m using it to … Read More
Today I received a tip from reader Brad Axelrod. He told me about the recent opinion of the Delaware Court of Chancery in Intrepid Investments (here). This case involves a fight over interpretation of a provision in which the parties agreed to exclusive jurisdiction of Delaware courts “[a]s to any dispute, claim, or litigation arising out of or relating in … Read More
In this March 2022 post, I examined an article by Eric Martinez, Frank Mollica, and Edward Gibson about their study showing that contracts are poorly written. I said that this article tells us nothing we don’t already know. The same authors are now back with another article, this one entitled Even Lawyers Do Not Like Legalese (here), published in the … Read More
These days I don’t write much about legaltech for contracts. There’s way too much of it. And I don’t do deals, so I’m not in much of a position to put such products through their paces. But I’m making an exception with this Q&A with Steven Gullion, of CrossCheck. CrossCheck looks for technical glitches that can afflict use of defined … Read More
Although no one publicly challenges my recommendations (see this 2018 blog post), I’ve occasionally encountered, in writing and in private exchanges with lawyers and law-school faculty, general arguments for sticking with traditional contract language. Here’s my taxonomy of those arguments. Claiming That Traditional Contract Language “Works” One such argument is that traditional contract language “works.” (See for example this 2017 … Read More
Well lookee here, another fight involving ambiguity of the part versus the whole! This time, it involves any. And the tipster, once again, is Glenn West! I guess I have to put Glenn on retainer. (Glenn’s tip about a fight over and gave rise to this post from two months ago.) The opinion in question is by the Texas Supreme … Read More
Last week I tweeted this, or something close to it: “When I want authoritative contract-drafting advice, I look to litigators.” I was aware that it was unclear whether I was being sincere or snarky. After a few hours, I decided that being gratuitously confusing was unhelpful, so I deleted the tweet. But the replies to my tweet remain. Some endorse … Read More
This past week I wrapped up the first three series (apart from trial series) of my new online course Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass. On thing that’s clear is that for many people, pandemic life is hectic. I ended up moving several people to a later series because of some crisis or other. And plenty of people missed sessions for various … Read More
Ken: I’m here with Mark Anderson, an English lawyer who specializes in IP transactions. He’s also a blogger and the co-author or editor of too many books related to contracts. I’ve mentioned him plenty on my blog, and we’ve done some interesting stuff together—just search for his name on my blog. Mark: I see you exhumed that photo from 2014. … Read More
