Adams on Contract Drafting

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By: Adams Contacts Consulting LLC

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Ken Adams

Latest from Adams on Contract Drafting

When we speak with potential clients, some remark to us, with a sage nod, that, well, LegalSifter doesn’t mark up the draft being reviewed. To make sure we understand what they’re referring to, we looked into this. We quickly determined that what these companies are alluding to is something I’ve seen already. This post is […] The post For Contract Review, Don’t Believe the AI-Markup Hype appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting. …
Drafters can learn three things from courts screwing up analysis of ambiguity. First, you learn what ambiguous text looks like. Second, you learn that fights over ambiguous contract language are messy and expensive. And third, you learn that too many courts are incapable of analyzing ambiguous contract language in a way that makes sense; see […] The post The U.S. Supreme Court Fails a Syntactic-Ambiguity Test appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting. …
The latest issue of World Commerce and Contracting’s Contracting Excellence Journal contains my article How Contract Managers Can Gain More Control Over Contracts (here). How do contract managers gain more control? By becoming informed consumers of contract language. And they should also consider using technology to help with review of draft contracts. (Yes, I have […] The post My New Article, “How Contract Managers Can Gain More Control Over Contracts” appeared first on Adams on …
Check out my latest video for LegalSifter, Ken’s Hot Take on Notices Provisions—all 8 minutes and 35 seconds of it. It’s available here. You can also get my latest and greatest notices provision and a list of related resources. Why notices provisions? Because I’ve been noodling with my notices provision over the past couple of […] The post Check Out My Hot Take on Notices Provisions appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting. …
The other day, Alex Hamilton dropped this on Twitter: Using “shall” in contracts, as suggested by @AdamsDrafting, has become a shibboleth. There are those who want to be modern, and those who’ve done their homework and are actually being modern. — Alex Hamilton (@AlexHamiltonRad) March 10, 2021 It’s been years since I’ve written anything about […] The post Revisiting the “Shall” Wars appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting. …
Today I noticed this post on LinkedIn, by Marty Finestone. Among other activities, he’s a legal designer. (Hi, Marty.) Because what I have to say would exceed LinkedIn’s character limit for comments, I permit myself a low-key comment by means of this post. Marty’s post features a photo with the slogan “Contracts shouldn’t be designed […] The post In Contract Drafting, Design Is the Third of Three Stages appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting…
Last week I asked this on Twitter: Is there a kind of term you really DON’T want to see in the other side’s draft contract? Something that sets the alarm bells ringing? pic.twitter.com/8ICeW8OAQ4 — Ken Adams (@AdamsDrafting) March 11, 2021 And I posed the same question in a post on the LinkedIn group for A […] The post Spotting in Contracts the Provisions You Really Care About appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting.…
Yesterday I saw a post on LinkedIn that mentioned Sullivan v. Abraham, a 2016 opinion of the Texas Supreme Court (PDF here). The LinkedIn post mentions that the opinion involved a serial comma, so of course I had to check it out. Unfortunately, this opinion offers another example of a court that’s inept at textual […] The post The Texas Supreme Court Doesn’t Know from Commas appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting. …
Last week I started three series of my online course Drafting Clearer Contracts: Masterclass for an Asian company with global operations. In the first session of Masterclass we discuss the front and back of the contract, just to get everyone used to comparing dysfunctional traditional contract language and the clearer alternative. I flashed on the […] The post Should I Delete This Word from My Concluding Clause? appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting.…