There’s style, and there’s substance, no? Well, not quite. Some drafting decisions don’t affect meaning. That includes all decisions relating to the look of a document. It also includes some decisions regarding wording. Witless archaisms such as witnesseth don’t affect meaning. And consider Acme may purchase the Shares and Acme is authorized to purchase the Shares. I recommend using the version … Read More
The act of creation is associated with the act of naming. That which is nameless doesn’t fully exist. I haven’t given a name to my approach to contract language, other than to refer to the result by, for example, brandishing the phrase “Drafting Clearer Contracts.” Similarly, I haven’t given a name to the current regime. Instead, I’ve limited myself to identifying its … Read More
This post by Mark Anderson last week used the title I had planned on using for a post of my own. Rather than launch a denial-of-service attack on IP Draughts, or send the boys round to see Mark, I decided to embrace the coincidence. Read our respective posts for deep insight into our creative processes. Or not. Next up, Mark … Read More
For data nerds, recent years have seen relentless progress. More! Better! Cheaper! But that’s not the case for one subgroup—contract nerds. Many moons ago (2006), I wrote here about word-searching exhibit 10 filings on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR system. The SEC requires that companies file their “material contracts” on EDGAR using the “exhibit 10” designation. So exhibit 10 filings represent … Read More
Reader Vance Koven prodded me to look at this post by Marianna Brown Bettman on her blog Legally Speaking Ohio (via this post on ContractsProf Blog). It’s about an appellate decision involving a contract between a general contractor and a subcontractor. Here’s the language at issue: Receipt of payment by contractor from the owner for work performed by subcontractor is … Read More
A reader asked me whether I could recommend any MSCD-ish resources on drafting consumer contracts. The short answer is that I’ve never looked for any such resources, although I recall that the 1981 book Writing Contracts in Plain English was a pioneering work in this field. Readers, can you recommend anything? I’ll now attempt slightly longer answer. I think that much … Read More
The Michigan Bar Journal’s “Plain Language” column recently celebrated its thirtieth year. Joe Kimble, its longtime editor, wrote this piece marking the event. Congratulations to Joe and to the Journal. They’ve provided a valuable service. My contribution to the “Plain Language” column was a two-part article published in 2002. It was the second article I ever wrote. It’s long been … Read More
In 2012 I wrote here about how Juliette Scott, a translator who blogs at Words to Deeds, is doing PhD research on the legal profession’s experience with translation, in particular of corporate and court-related documents. Well, her research is still ongoing, so if you commission translations of contracts, I encourage you to go here and complete her survey. By the way, I’ve … Read More
This week Richard Kopf, a senior U.S. district-court judge, announced in this post on his blog, Hercules and the Umpire, that he wouldn’t be writing anything further for the blog, which he began in February 2013. For more about Judge Kopf and his blogging, see this WSJ article and this ABA Journal article. In a comment to his farewell post I said, perhaps rather … Read More
The notion of “design” is all the rage. For example, this article about Stanford’s D.school appeared in the New York Times earlier this week. As regards the legal profession, there’s this ABA Journal article by Paul Lippe on the role of design in legal services. Then there are all the references to “contract design” in academic stuff I’ve been reading. So far, … Read More
