Fixing Your Contracts: What Training in Contract Drafting Can and Can’t Do
Most contracts prose is dysfunctional, but training is available to help contracts professionals draft clearly and concisely, write Chris Lemens and Kenneth A. Adams on ACC Docket. It helps to supplement training with centralized initiatives, they contend.
“Any given contract will likely be riddled with deficient usages that collectively turn contract prose into ‘legalese’ — flagrant archaisms, botched verbs, redundancy, endless sentences, meaningless boilerplate, and so on.”
They write that it’s possible to train contracts personnel in how to draft and review contracts consistent with a set of guidelines.
Among those guidelines: lose the archaisms, gain control of verbs, stop using the phrase “best efforts,” and don’t rely on mystery usages.
