The Google Ngram Viewer is a neat tool. It allows you to check the relative frequency with which words and phrases appear, over time, in Google’s corpus of millions of digitized books. It follows that the Ngram Viewer can help you build a case that a given word or phrase is the more modern choice than another word or phrase … Read More
Although I’m committed to helping anyone who’s interested become an informed consumer of contract language, I think it’s self-evident that automated contract creation is the most effective way to scale rigorous contract language. That’s why I continue to discuss automation with my clients. Some of you might recall that my software of choice is ContractExpress. That remains the case even though … Read More
Two people I enjoy following on Twitter are Kyle Mitchell (@kemitchell) and Ansel Halliburton (@anseljh). They’re half my age and twice my technical sophistication, they’re interested in contracts, and they throw around ideas that largely go over my head but certainly seem ambitious. Here’s Ansel’s latest idea: Updated some *very early* thoughts about what Simplified Legal English could look like. Comments? … Read More
Today, my mole buried deep in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California—oh all right, it was @VBalasubramani—told me about Total Recall Techs. v. Luckey, No. C 15-02281 WHA, 2016 WL 199796 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 16, 2016) (PDF here). It involves a dispute between plaintiff Total Recall Technologies (a general partnership of Thomas Seidl and Ron Igra) and defendant Palmer … Read More
I consult the cooking website Serious Eats quite often; I find it reliable, interesting, and innovative. The presiding genius is Kenji López-Alt, aka @TheFoodLab. He has a new book out, unsurprisingly also called The Food Lab; go here for the website. In true Christmas spirit, I purchased a copy for myself. I’ve only just started looking at it, but already something has … Read More
Last week I saw the following tweet: What Role Do In-House Counsel Have in Editing Briefs? via @ACCinhouse https://t.co/slJcNyvAAt — LexisNexis Legal (@LexisNexisLegal) November 6, 2015 Here’s my tweet in response: Same for contracts? https://t.co/NnaV96IbpH — Ken Adams (@AdamsDrafting) November 7, 2015 I’ll now answer my own question. In that ACC article, the author describes having a role in editing litigation … Read More
Over the weekend I listened to this episode of the radio show Freakonomics, “How Many Doctors Does It Take to Start a Healthcare Revolution?” My ears pricked up when I heard Jeffrey Brenner, who is a physician and the executive director of the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers, say the following: What I think many people would be shocked to find out … Read More
Earlier this month I felt compelled to respond to a critique by Tim Cummins of an article I had co-authored. (See this post.) Tim is head of the International Association for Contract & Commercial Management (IACCM). Since it’s safe to assume that Tim won’t be inviting me over for tea any time soon, there’s nothing preventing me from now commenting … Read More
It’s a little after 4:00 a.m., I’m in a lounge at Bangkok’s airport, and my thoughts have turned to … contracts playbooks. You know—those scripts that tell a company’s contracts professionals how to respond to comments to the company’s draft contracts, or how to respond to the other side’s drafts. In connection with a consulting project I’m working on, a … Read More
Tweets by @Jeena_Cho and @CherylStephens alerted me to this item by J. Kim Wright. The title is Conscious Contracts: Bringing Purpose and Values into Legal Documents. Go ahead and read it; it’s short. I’ll wait. You’re back? Good. In her tweet, Cheryl asked me whether there was room in my world for this concept. Well, I find what Kim has … Read More
