Recently, noted swashbuckler and longtime comrade-in-arms Alex Hamilton issued me a challenge: Why not give a contract just an “effective date” without worrying about whether effective date refers to the date of the contract or timing of performance? Confusion In…

At the recent ACC annual meeting, Adrian Goss—whom I first met a dozen years ago on a trip to Australia—told me he had uploaded some miscellaneous-provisions stuff from Practical Law and asked ChatGPT to redraft it so it complies with…

I saw discussion on LinkedIn about whether one might use metrics to assess training in contract drafting. Here’s why I think that ain’t happening. How to Say Clearly and Concisely What You Want to Say in a Contract First, what’s…

In this post from a few months ago, I wrote about doing my first in-person Drafting Clearer Contracts presentation in four years. It involved little in the way of travel—just taking the Long Island Rail Road to Manhattan. But since…

Alé Dalton, a healthcare partner at the Nashville office of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP, saw fit to do a LinkedIn post about A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. And I reckon it’s the most engaging and digestible take…

I left Twitter in 2023. That was an easy decision—it had become a Nazi bar under the auspices of a billionaire man-child. After a couple of false starts, last month I found an agreeable Twitter alternative—Bluesky. Although Jack Dorsey, then…

You’re drafting a contract that’s big enough for you to group sections into articles, so the contract is easier to navigate. What do you call the boilerplate at the back? “Boilerplate” would be too cryptic (for many) and too casual.…