Readers have pointed out to me that the infamous phrase moral turpitude has crawled out from under a rock into the glare of the spotlight, thanks to Charlie Sheen. In this March 7 letter to Sheen’s lawyer, Warner Bros. Television’s outside counsel, Munger, Tolles & Olson, stated that Warner Bros. Television’s termination of Sheen’s contract was based in part on … Read More
I’ll be in Philadelphia on March 10, 2011, giving the first “Drafting Clearer Contracts” seminar of 2011. (Go here for more information.) I’m looking forward to getting back on the road. I have a revised set of materials, with a nifty Koncision theme rather than the old AdamsDrafting theme. And I plan on including a Koncision demo. But to forestall … Read More
I use one of my TweetDeck columns to search Twitter for references to “contract drafting.” Out of the flotsam that’s pulled in, I’ve found one category that’s particularly intriguing. It consists of Twitter updates in Indonesian. I have no idea what’s being discussed, as just about the only words in English are “contract drafting.” Here’s one example, sent by @apriliansyah: … Read More
The other day I spoke with someone about a chunk of my work. This person was entirely helpful and congenial, but he gently made it clear that he wasn’t inclined to pay much attention to my analysis and recommendations. Instead, he said that his organization preferred to do things “their way.” Referring to “your way” is fine when it comes … Read More
I’m partial to comparing contract language to software code. And I’m not the only one. For example, on Twitter @dgulbran said, “Programming and contract drafting both appeal to me; they both require logical consistency and attention to detail. I may need mental help.” (Welcome to the club, Dave!) But the analogy goes only so far. In my recent post on … Read More
This week 3 Geeks and a Law Blog offered three posts by guest blogger Ian Nelson, of Practical Law Company, on the role of practice support lawyers, or PSLs, in the U.S. The third in the series appeared yesterday; they’re all available here. (Ian’s a former colleague. Yo, Ian!) Here’s where Ian ends up: The PSL role should be less … Read More
I’ll assume that you’re aware that Watson, IBM’s artificial-intelligence “question answering machine,” bested two human competitors on “Jeopardy” this week. (If not, check out this New York Times story.) It didn’t take long for this event to acquire a legal angle, in the form of this National Law Journal article by Robert Weber, IBM’s general counsel. In it, he suggests … Read More
You may recall that I was on a panel at the 2010 ACC annual meeting. I included in the materials for that panel three versions of an extract of a master professional services agreement. I thought that they might be of general interest, so I offer them to you now, in Word: Go here for the “before” version. Go here … Read More
[Updated 11:00 a.m. EST, February 17, 2011: Revised to reflect that I’ve found a flavor of solicit that I can live with, and to include some new no-soliciting language.] It’s common for confidentiality agreements to contain a no-soliciting provision. But when you come to think of it—and I just have—usually the solicit bit doesn’t work very well. In this context, … Read More
The Canadian Lawyer article on contract automation (see this post) starts with the following quotation: “Every lawyer steals like crazy. You have to. … It’s much faster, and it’s good to go with tried-and-true boilerplate. You worry about the differences, not the standard clauses.” The reference to stealing brought to mind my article on copyright in contract drafting. (Go here … Read More
