You cannot be an informed consumer (or producer) of contract language without consulting A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. (See this 2024 blog post.) So doesn’t it follow that to be an informed consumer of contract language, all that’s required is that you get yourself of copy of MSCD? Well, no. For one thing, you have to apply yourself. Contracts ... Read More The post What’s Semantic Acuity, and How Can I Get Some? appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting ..read more

Apparently Emily Dickinson said, somewhere, “If you take care of the small things, the big things take care of themselves.” That sounds comforting, but it seems like a recipe for unexpectedly being steamrollered while you’re taking care of the small things. Here’s a more reliable but downbeat alternative, said by me, right here: “If you mess up the small things, ... Read More The post On Messing Up the Small Things appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting ..read more

The Notion of “Tested” Contract Language LinkedIn is the place where dead ideas go to be endlessly reborn from their ashes, like a phoenix. One such idea is the notion that it’s risky to abandon the legalese featured in contracts, because courts have told us what those words and phrases mean. My first blog post about this notion of “tested” ... Read More The post For the Nth Time, I Do Battle with the Notion of “Tested” Contract Language appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting ..read more

A few days ago, I received an email from the Library of Congress. Here’s the opening sentence: “The United States Library of Congress has selected your website for inclusion in the Legal Blawgs Web Archive, which is part of a larger collection of historically and culturally significant websites that have been designated for preservation.” (The image at the bottom of ... Read More The post The Library of Congress Has Selected This Blog, Before Law Blogs Go the Way of the Dodo appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting ..read more

The relentless Kevin Toll (see this blog post) has proposed that I ditch thereafter. Here are some of his proposed changes to Adams Contracts templates: Regarding afterward, Garner’s Modern English Usage 37 (5th ed. 2022) says, “Afterwards (= later) is often changed to afterward by American editors, though in popular usage the two forms are used interchangeably. Across World Englishes, ... Read More The post Revisiting “Thereafter” appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting ..read more

At the beginning of this year, I said in this blog post that you cannot be an informed consumer (or producer) of contract language without consulting A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting. No one has suggested I’m mistaken. I’m not surprised—disagreeing with me would require that you either (1) mount a spirited defense of copy-and-pasting dysfunction or (2) point ... Read More The post Eating the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge: Or, Why “A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting” Is Necessary But Not Sufficient appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting ..read more

Last week, Kevin Miller, LegalSifter’s CEO, used Adams Contracts’ confidentiality agreement template. In the process, he suggested that I bold the title. When Kevin shared his opinion, I realized I’ve never explained why I don’t bold the title, and no one had ever commented on that preference. So around 25 years into my grand adventure, allow me to articulate to ... Read More The post Why I Don’t Bold the Title of a Contract appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting ..read more

This week, Adams Contracts launched a new service agreement template (see this post on the Adams Contracts blog). Whom did that rouse? Kevin Toll, the Adams Contracts client featured in this blog post from earlier this year. Turning on the new template a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, he pointed out how I had managed to ignore some ... Read More The post As Goes “Hereby Grants To”, So Goes “Hereby Assigns To” appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting ..read more

In its recent opinion in Salama v. Simon, No. 2024-1124-JTL, 2024 WL 4906737 (Del. Ch. Nov. 27, 2024), the Delaware Court of Chancery cites A Manual of Style for Contract Drafting for what it has to say about “the expection of relevance.” That’s a concept underlying a subtle ambiguity associated with the word may. Rather than discuss the expectation of ... Read More The post The Delaware Chancery Court Cites MSCD on “The Expectation of Relevance” appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting ..read more

At long last, go here for details of the initial Drafting Clearing Contracts training for 2025, consisting of three series of Masterclass and one presentation. (Go here for general information about Masterclass; go here for general information about my presentations.) On the course site you’ll see links to testimonials. In recent years, I’ll done little blurb harvesting—it can be a ... Read More The post “Drafting Clearer Contracts” Training for the First Three Months of 2025 appeared first on Adams on Contract Drafting ..read more