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
So ends another year on the blog, a year during which 967,730 people have visited the site so far. That’s a lot of visits. Here are the ten posts (from whatever year) people visited most in 2016, with the most-visited at the top: Using the Terms “Negligence” and “Gross Negligence” in a Contract “Effective Date” The Apostrophe in “Five Days’ … Read More
Once or twice a month I send to my 3,000 subscribers a newsletter containing not only links to recent blog posts but also musings about whatever happens to have popped into my brain. I’m under no illusions that my newsletters make for gripping reading, but what the heck: in an end-of-the-year, end-of-civilization spirit, here, in reverse chronological order, are links … Read More
Remember ejusdem generis? It’s the principle of interpretation that holds that if general words follow an enumeration of two or more things, they apply only to persons or things of the same general kind or class. Joe Kimble’s excellent article on ejusdem generis (here) reminded me of the following assertion in Scalia and Garner’s Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal … Read More
ACC Europe is holding its 2017 annual meeting on 7–9 May in Cascais, Portugal. And I’ll be there, as I have a 1.5-hour “Drafting Clearer Contracts” spot on the programme for 8 May. I have in mind devoting my entire time to what I call “the categories of contract language,” which relates to how you use verb structures in contracts. I’m … Read More
The link toward the top right of this page hardly screams for attention, so allow me to mention that you can subscribe to my newsletter by submitting your email address on this page. What is my newsletter, you ask? It’s a once-or-twice-a-month email with a list of blog posts published since the previous newsletter, plus some random musings. You might … Read More
Yes, yours truly is responsible for the quotation in the headline above, which is from this article in the Law Society Gazette. I also love that they quote my joke “93%” statistic as if I had intended it to be legit.
Last week I received an unusual request. I heard from a colleague of Michelle Schuld, of The J.M. Smucker Company. I’ll spare you and Michelle the full details, but the gist of it is that Michelle leads the business services team that oversees contracts for the entire company, and she’s an enthusiastic fan. Her colleagues wanted to know if I could … Read More
Earlier this week I was at Clio Cloud Conference 2016. I’ll tell you about that soon, but for now, I just want to make available a link to the interview I did there with Laurence Colletti (@LaurenceEsq) of Legal Talk Network, all 17 minutes and 50 seconds of it: go here. I had fun recording it; thanks to Laurence for making … Read More
[Updated 9 March 2021] Recently a handful of people have in passing expressed to me the same sentiment: they don’t always agree with me. Given how often I hear this, I’ve long thought that my epitaph should be, “People didn’t always agree with him.” It seems pointless simply to tell me that you don’t always agree with me. What am I supposed … Read More
