Betteridge’s law of headlines says that “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” Well, Betteridge’s law applies to this post. Raiford Palmer drew my attention to this tweet, which says as follows: Defined terms (“Definitions”) should be 1 word. 2 words MAX, in rare cases. If you’re out here dropping 3+ word … Read More
This week I launched a new training option, Drafting Clearer Contracts: Presentation. (Go here for the relevant page of my training site; go here for the related blog post.) So I figured it might be helpful for me to summarize what I hope participants will gain from my training, whether it’s in the form of Presentation or the other option, … Read More
So the fifth edition of A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting has been unleashed. (Buy it here!) You own the fourth edition and are wondering whether you should fork over for MSCD5 US$139.95 plus any tax and shipping. If working with contracts is an important part of what you do and you’ve found MSCD4 valuable, I think you’d appreciate … Read More
I noticed a 3 Geeks and a Law Blog podcast (here) that features Toby Brown answering a “crystal ball question.” Here’s the teaser: Toby Brown takes on our question this week by talking about the fact that attorneys are resistant to changing behaviors, not because they are unwilling to adapt to new technology, but because this is an industry that … Read More
“Confirmation bias” is a term for the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirming your existing beliefs or theories. The notion is expressed in the old saw that if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. My hammer is that it’s important to get right what you say in a contract and how you say it, … Read More
Last year the head of a government department that handles procurement had a dozen people on his team take my online course Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass. Yesterday I asked him how it had gone. Here’s the most relevant part of what he had to say: “What I heard from most attendees is that they didn’t find your course useful in … Read More
Learning how to review a contract is the same as learning how to draft a contract: you have to know what to say and how to say it clearly and concisely. Of course, when you’re drafting, you’re in control, and you have a copy-and-paste starting point that you got from somewhere, so you can appear that you know what you’re … Read More
Selling services is very different from selling stuff, so contracts for one are different from contracts for the other. Yet drafters are prone to deploying in contacts for the sale of services concepts that make sense only for selling goods. One example of that is saying that services are being sold “as-is.” When you sell a car “as-is,” that means … Read More
I’m in the habit of importuning people. (Importune means, according to one dictionary definition, “harass (someone) persistently for or to do something.”) I don’t importune just anyone though—I limit it to experts in subjects that have a bearing on contract language. And perhaps a better word is supplicate. Those whom I importune, or supplicate, don’t necessarily respond adversely. For example, … Read More
Better late than never, here are the first 2022 series of my online course Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass: Masterclass (19), 11:00 am Fridays, 14 January to 4 March Masterclass (20), noon Thursdays, 10 February to 31 March Masterclass (21), 11:00 am Wednesdays, 2 March to 20 April Masterclass (22), noon Tuesdays, 5 April to 24 May This course is built around … Read More
