Archive for the ‘Legal Drafting’ Category

The risks of complexity in 737s – and contracts

I’ve been keeping up on the Boeing 737 MAX 8 story/debacle, which has many fascinating aspects to it, among them: how a storied company like Boeing, whose brand is entirely dependent on the perception of safety, could sacrifice safety for short-term gain, and what happens when regulators can no longer keep up with the companies […]

Do big-company GCs know how awful their form contracts are?

It’s a question I sincerely wonder about. (If any big-company GCs are reading this — call me!) I often represent startup clients in negotiations with counsel for large companies, and strangely, while the caliber of their attorneys is generally high, the quality of their contract forms is, on average, awful. How can this be?

More silly lawyer habits that can bite you in the $@#!

Last year, I posted about the silly lawyer drafting practice of representing a number with both numerals and words. It’s a bad habit that many lawyers continue to use unquestioningly, and as I pointed out in that post, it can lead to potentially problematic contractual inconsistencies. I continue to come across examples of the problem. Here’s another. […]

Silly lawyer habits that can bite you in the $@#!

Take a look at the section below, from a contract a client gave me to review today. What is wrong with this picture? Found it yet? It’s at the end, where the words say “One Hundred Seventy Five Thousand Dollars” and the numerals say “$100,000.” Notice that this is not a small-change mistake. It potentially means […]