Contract Drafting Basics: It's How You Say It - Technical Contract Drafting Tips

• Describing how most technical contract drafting errors can be resolved with 12 easy to understand principles (5 minutes)
• Recapping the main takeaways from previous programs in the series (10 minutes)
• An overview of the 6 rules and the 6 secondary concepts that flow from them (10 minutes)
• A deep dive into the main 6 rules (50 minutes)
• Exercise and language to test the nuances of the rules and related concepts back to previous programs in the series (20 minutes)
• Final exercise bringing the series closure and explaining how viewing contracts as "a relationship" rather than a "magic piece of paper" is a fundamental sea change for navigating difficult drafting and negotiation situations (15 minutes)

Runtime: 1 hour and 42 minutes
Recorded: June 17, 2019

The "Pareto Principle," which holds true for many business cases, suggests that 80% of issues can be corrected by learning 20% of the solutions. We believe contract drafting is the same: identifying and fixing a handful of common issues will fix 80% of drafting problems.

Contract drafting is something that transactional lawyers do every day, so this program is aimed toward identifying as many of the “low hanging fruit” issues as quickly possible so you can concentrate your practice on the nuances. This program focuses on “technical” drafting skills: how things are worded, how definitions are used, etc.

This part of Contract Drafting Basics series starts with twelve seemingly straightforward rules. Through nuances and real-world examples we can see that these principles -- although easy to understand in theory -- are actually much more difficult spot in practice unless you think about them systematically. Regardless of industry and regardless of the size of the deal you’re trying to put together, these are fundamental concepts for every attorney attempting to draft an agreement should know as they begin making edits to their templates and other precedential materials.

This program, in particular, provides a wrap-up and closure to the series. Since it reiterates and reinforces the concepts from the other parts of the series, it serves both (1) a great capstone for those who have seen the first parts as well as (2) a useful entry point for those who have not watched them.

This program was recorded on June 17th, 2019.

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