Welcome to my new blog. And more generally, welcome to my new web site.
They mark the beginning of a new adventure: Over the past several years, I’ve been devoting an increasing proportion of my time and energy to all things contract drafting. Now I’ve taken the final step and turned this engrossing sideline into my livelihood.
As for the blog, it has a specific function. Even after a couple of books and a dozen articles, I still have lots to write about. I’ll continue to use articles to lay out my thoughts on bigger topics, but that leaves plenty of tricky smaller issues of contract language. The blog will provide an incentive for me to actually tackle them, rather than, say, procrastinate until deadlines loom for the next edition of my ABA book “A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting” (which I’ll often be referring to as “MSCD”).
And the blog will allow me to air my ideas before they appear in print. I’m used to my articles leaving nary a tangible trace other than the occasional appreciative email. I hope that by contrast the comment feature of my blog will encourage readers to point out the shortcomings of my posts—I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty finding some if you look! And if you’d like me to offer my thoughts on a topic, don’t hesitate to contact me.
Because of the breadth of my activities—I consult! I do seminars! I teach! I write!—my blog items won’t just be about contract language. And because I’ll be focusing on analysis rather than news, the odds are that my posts will appear less frequently than posts at many legal blogs and will tend to be on the longish side.
I have some people to thank: Bruce Wilson, my Penn Law apartment-mate and friend, put together my previous web site and updated it over several years, a role that offered him much nuisance and negligible reward, other than my gratitude. And Peter Flaschner and his colleagues at The Blog Studio were a source of creativity, sound advice, and good humor as they helped me put together the new site.
Enjoy the site!