Legal Drafting in a Nutshell
Authors:
Kuney, George W. / Looper, Donna C.
Edition:
5th
Copyright Date:
2021
25 chapters
have results for drafting
Chapter 3. Legislative Drafting 33 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Legislation comes from several classes of drafters, with varying degrees of expertise and competence. Federal and most state legislative bodies have full-time staff attorneys who do nothing but draft and revise proposed legislation on behalf of the elected representatives. The President and most governors have staff members whose sole job is to draft legislation for the administration. Administrative agencies within the executive branch nearly always have a section in the legal department that does nothing but draft agency regulations. Cities and counties usually rely on their appointed or elected attorneys, for whom drafting is only one of a myriad of duties and who sometimes work on a part-time basis. Unfortunately, some legislators and other officials, many of whom are not lawyers, think that because they were elected to enact laws they are also competent to draft them.
- Those are the people who may initially draft a piece of legislation. At this stage, drafting can be a thoughtful, reflective, careful, and painstaking process. Lawmaking, however, is not very tidy; the results of this initial drafting process rarely survive intact. Typically, a bill will be sent to a committee, where the amending and rewriting process begins. Whatever emerges from committee is subject to further tinkering by the full legislative body. As a matter of both style and substance, the drafting that is done at this stage is often—but not always—inferior to the initial proposal.
- Within limits, the private law document drafter is free to adopt whatever conventions of form, style, and usage that meet that drafter’s fancy. A failure to follow sound drafting principles may cause difficulties in interpretation and enforcement; but it generally is not going to disqualify the document. The legislative drafter does not enjoy that freedom. Legislatures, legislative drafting services, administrative agencies, and even the various court systems frequently use drafting manuals and rules that explicitly dictate the form, the style, and the usage that must be adhered to when drafting legislation.
- All drafted documents serve essentially the same function. They establish the rights, duties, privileges, immunities, and other legal relations of and between the parties that are subject to the jurisdiction of the document. This is as true of a criminal code as it is of a construction contract. Moreover, the investigatory and thinking process of creating drafted documents is basically the same, as are the rules of organization, style, and precision that are used in contract drafting.
- Legislation starts with an idea and ends with words on paper. The legislative drafter’s primary function is not to come up with the idea. Lawyers working for a legislative drafting service are almost never expected to produce the idea; they draft what they are asked to draft. But many of the other classes of drafters discussed above do play an integral role in the development and formulation of the client’s
- Open Chapter
Chapter 1. A Philosophy of Drafting 45 results (showing 5 best matches)
- A badly drafted document is an invitation to litigation. Litigation is not just a private undertaking, fully funded by the participants. Everyone pays for it. Providing judges, clerks, staff, and courtroom facilities is a fundamental function of government funded by taxpayers. In addition, contract litigation caused by bad drafting clogs the dockets. Bad drafting contributes enormously to that litigation and the resulting social cost. A high percentage of all contract cases involve issues that could have been avoided by more careful drafting.
- Statutory litigation provides an even more damning testament to the social costs that flow from bad drafting. Purely factual disputes are unavoidable. But the critical issue in statutory litigation is often not what the facts are, but whether the law as drafted applies to those facts or what the statute really means. Such litigation is evidence of bad drafting and the social cost of it is enormous. Further, poor drafting, especially of criminal statutes, leads to harms not effectively prevented as
- The goal of all legal writing is to communicate clearly and concisely. Too often, however, briefs, office memoranda, client letters, and especially contracts and instruments are drafted in ponderous, repetitive, and pretentious language that undermines this goal. The objective of this book is to provide you with comprehensive processes and techniques to identify common problems in legal drafting and to produce documents that clearly and concisely communicate substance to their audiences. In short, we believe there is no reason that legal drafting cannot be elegant, utilitarian, and efficient in achieving its purposes.
- The goal of the drafting process is to produce documents that can be easily understood by the legal and lay audience involved in the matter. Legal drafting is different from other forms of writing. It is purposeful writing meant to inform, persuade, and memorialize events, agreements, and legal analysis.
- In sum, the drafter must know how to use legal rules to meet the needs of the client. Although Chapter 8 more fully discusses how the drafter uses law in the drafting process, the basic principle is to harness the law by drafting clearly into or around existing legal rules and precedents.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 10. Choosing the Right Concept 21 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Instead of drafting in terms of the appropriate generality, some drafters instead try to draft in terms of all the specifics that encompass the generality. This is bad drafting for two reasons.
- Finding the proper level of generality is usually more of an issue in legislative drafting than in private-law document drafting. Legislation, by definition, deals with broad classes of persons and things. The matter also has constitutional significance. Unless the legislated category is a fairly close match with the harm to be avoided or the good to be achieved, the statute may be over- or under-inclusive, and would thus violate the Equal Protection Clause.
- However, vagueness does have shortcomings as a drafting technique. Most of the disadvantages are simply the downside of the advantages. First, there is greater possibility for disagreement over the meaning of vague terms than precise terms. Despite the professed flexibility and good faith of the parties, sometimes these disagreements cannot be resolved short of litigation. Similarly, a legislature would be ill-advised to use vague terms when drafting legislation that is likely to be vigorously resisted by a significant segment of the population. Labor legislation, for example, is frequently drafted in vague terms. But the question of what is or is not within the scope of the legislation can have a profound financial impact on a business enterprise, which provides a great incentive to litigation. Hence, employment-related litigation has occupied both state and federal courts for many years, much of it relating to the fundamental meaning of the vague terms used in the statute.
- At this point, the drafter has some idea of what the client desires the drafted document to accomplish, understands what the law requires or prohibits in this regard, and has determined the substantive content. Translating all of this into written form requires the drafter to engage in conceptualization.
- Concepts in Drafting
- Open Chapter
Chapter 17. Reviewing and Revising 16 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Once the initial writing is over, put the draft away for at least a day, if possible. Although you will have revised and rewritten as you produced the first draft, you did so with the perspective of the writer organizing and putting thoughts down on the page. You need fresh eyes for the revising and rewriting stage of the drafting process, which is where you turn your draft into a quality document.
- When reviewing documents drafted by others, and when critically examining your own drafting, use the following questions to focus your review:
- text to indicate deletions from a prior draft and drafts, the reviewer knows exactly what is new and needs to be reviewed, the other material presumably having been approved earlier. Track changes may even be appropriate at the first draft stage if you are basing the document on an exemplar, especially one prepared by your reviewing attorney.
- The final step in the drafting process is to do a comprehensive review of the document and, on the basis of that review, to do one final revision. The review process also occurs when a drafter is asked to review and revise documents prepared by others, not only to bring these documents into compliance with the more modern conventions of good drafting style, but to satisfy legal requirements, fill substantive gaps, and cure ambiguities. Similarly, specific substantive changes usually provide the impetus for statutory revisions because of the difficulty and complexity of the amendment process. However, it is not uncommon for other types of legislation to be periodically reviewed and revised without any substantive changes. For example, as a result of Plain English legislation, an administrative agency may find it necessary to revise their rules and regulations.
- One helpful technique is preparing a flowchart. A flowchart is a schematic diagram of a drafted document or portions of it. Doing a flowchart will accomplish four things.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 7. Getting Started 24 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The client is the primary user of the drafted document. But drafted documents are nearly always read and used by a wide variety of people, often for different purposes. This is the audience of a document. The drafter should identify each member of this audience and draft with their varying uses in mind.
- Drafted documents do not exist in a legal vacuum. The drafter cannot simply research only the law that impacts directly on the drafted document or obtain from the client only the specific facts that will be incorporated into the terms of the document. The drafter must fully appreciate the broader legal and factual environment in which the document is going to function.
- Legislative drafters face equally difficult multiple-client problems. The drafter who works for a legislative drafting service usually drafts statutes at the request of an individual legislator, who is the client. But the legislative drafter may also be on the staff of a committee, with each member having a slightly different agenda. A consensus may exist over the need for a statute creating liability for sales of alcohol to already intoxicated patrons, but the legislator who is an active member of Mothers Against Drunk Driving may have one objective in mind, while another who is beholden to the Tavern Keepers Association may have another. Whose objective does the drafter attempt to serve? An attorney in private practice drafting proposed legislation on behalf of a consortium of business interests may face similar dilemmas.
- It would be difficult, for example, to draft a contract between a movie producer and director based solely on information elicited directly from either or both the parties. At the minimum, such an undertaking would require knowledge of how movies are made, the traditions of the producer-director relationship, the tacit assumptions of producers and directors about their duties and responsibilities, and the expectations of each. Similarly, the lawyer who does not understand the complex traditions of the construction business is ill-equipped to draft a document regulating that process. The standard practice of incorporating various trade-association-approved provisions, which are notoriously ill-drafted, is itself enough to drive the neophyte drafter to distraction—because they are based on factual assumptions about trade practices that the drafter is unfamiliar with.
- The first three steps of the drafting process involve understanding the client’s objectives, knowing the audience, and appreciating the legal and factual context in which the document will operate. These three steps are closely related, as they provide the foundation on which everything else is built.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 9. Determining Substance 15 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Drafted documents, whether of the private or public law variety, can be conceptualized as a collection of rules. An effective rule has five critical elements that can be used to ensure that the drafted documents cover everything that it should, at least in a broad sense. The five elements of a rule are: (1) the person; (2) the conduct; (3) the object of the action; (4) the circumstances; and (5) the consequences.
- The substantive content of a drafted document is subject-matter specific. A residential lease, a contract for the sale of an airplane, and a statute prohibiting extortion would probably contain few, if any, identical substantive provisions. Yet, the content of all drafted documents is similar at a very high level of generality. Content derives from two sources: the law and the exigencies of the transaction. The types of provisions that are discussed below all derive from one or both of those sources.
- Beyond what is required, essential, or strongly recommended, the substantive content of the document is mostly up to the client. The drafter’s function is to make the client aware of all the possibilities. An employer desiring to have an employment contract drafted may have never considered whether, in addition to the usual terms, the contract should contain a prohibition against releasing confidential information to competitors. The legislative drafter should likewise review similar legislation in other states for ideas about what might be included in a statute of the type being drafted.
- Formbooks frequently contain annotated drafting checklists that not only identify possible substantive provisions, but also discuss the legal and practical significance of these provisions. With respect to each possible provision, a good checklist will also indicate the specific facts the drafter should elicit from the client. These checklists are often the most valuable aspect of these books. The model forms themselves may be poorly drafted.
- In either case, the drafter’s responsibility is to cover all the possibilities, to determine the client’s wishes, and to incorporate those desires into the drafted document.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 16. Document Typography and Layout 11 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The most important consideration in choosing type size in drafted documents is that the printed words should be of being seen by all or most readers. Some people are capable of and prefer reading small print. Others, however, cannot read small print without resorting to a magnifying glass or special glasses. Thus, generally, text in drafted documents should be no smaller than 12-point type.
- One of the plain English movement’s points was that the physical appearance of drafted documents should enhance even the least literate user’s understanding of the substantive content of the document. Plain English proponents enlisted the aid of experts in the fields of typography (the appearance of printed words) and layout design. Their contribution to good drafting has been significant. The basic features and principles involve the following.
- The optimal type size and font is often debated. Indeed, each reader has individual preferences—which is why e-book readers such as Kindle and Nook devices have many choices among type size and font styles. The objectives in transactional and legislative drafting are to make type size and font style accessible to the widest possible audience.
- Remember that line spacing is not equivalent to or a substitute for creating sufficient white space in drafted documents.
- The text of a drafted document can be made more comprehensible in a number of ways.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 5. Drafting Ethics 43 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The privilege probably attaches to most of the information that an attorney would obtain when preparing to draft a document. Oddly enough, however, unless it contains information that would be privileged, the drafted document itself is not generally privileged. In other words, the communication to the lawyer is privileged but not necessarily the facts that are communicated.
- Fifth, when a lawyer is drafting a document for co-clients, information received from one client is generally not privileged from the other clients. This is another reason for declining to draft contracts on behalf of all the contracting parties.
- Business lawyers frequently encounter drafting-related conflicts in the context of simultaneous representation of the corporation and that corporation’s officers, directors, or stockholders. The lawyer’s primary duty as counsel to the corporation is to the corporate entity. A corporate lawyer, thus, cannot draft documents or otherwise assist stockholders in setting up a competing enterprise or draft a separation agreement on behalf of a departing officer.
- Drafted documents are often involved in litigation—a breach of contract case, for example. Clients frequently retain in their files documents containing information relating to the contract and, indeed, prior drafts of the contract itself. Sometimes, these documents are relevant to the litigation, and sometimes they contain information that is adverse to the interests of the party who has retained them.
- Second, lawyers drafting routine documents like deeds, who are acting on the instructions of a client and who are not giving any legal advice in connection with the drafting, have sometimes been referred to as “mere scriveners,” meaning in this context that the privilege does not attach. The scope of this exception is unclear, however, since drafting even routine documents requires some degree of expertise, even if it is nothing more than knowing that a routine document will indeed suffice. The courts recognize the exception most often when the document is now unavailable and the purpose of the testimony is to establish that the document existed and what it contained.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 13. Drafting Style and Usage 25 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Unbury verbs. Nominalizations contribute enormously to the wordiness of most drafted documents. Nominalization is a fancy term for turning an ordinary verb into a country-club noun, and then tacking on another verb to satisfy syntactical requirements. The simple “pending” becomes “during the pendency of.” Nominalizations in a drafted document should nearly always be converted back into their simpler verb form.
- Draft in the present tense. A contract or statute is said to be constantly “speaking.” Drafted documents
- Try not to draft in terms of a larger class from which certain members are then excepted; draft in terms of the targeted subclass directly. So, instead of saying,
- Cross-referencing can help cut down on repetitive provisions. It is usually better to cross-reference to articles, sections, and paragraphs rather than pages, since pages change in the drafting process. A good general rule is to use the word “section” to refer to separate provisions of a formal agreement and the word “paragraph” to refer to separate provisions of an informal letter or letter agreement. The key is to be specific and consistent. Remember to proofread cross-references at the very end of the drafting process to make sure they remain accurate. Some drafters prefer to leave the section or paragraph reference blank until the last draft,
- The statements made in this section are general ones, and you must evaluate in each instance whether the general advice should be followed. In drafting agreements, concentrate especially on whether your chosen word has the correct level of specificity. Overdressing one’s writing makes it harder to read and does not demonstrate education or sophistication. Education and sophistication are shown by drafting that makes its meaning clear with little effort on the reader’s part. Still, reasonable minds can differ on matters of word choice. Use the following suggestions as a guide, but, as with most legal drafting, it is best for you to make up your own mind as to what is appropriate under the circumstances.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 4. The Rules of Interpretation 16 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Still, the drafter cannot totally ignore these various rules of interpretation. They are, however, something to be drafted around rather than tools for achieving a particular result. Put differently, if a document is properly drafted, then a court will probably not need to rely on these rules when construing the document.
- There is probably no sure way to draft around this judicial proclivity. Rather, the drafter must simply attempt to anticipate what some court is later going to decide is consistent with public policy and draft with that possibility in mind.
- A legislative drafter in a jurisdiction with such a statute must draft with these rules and definitions in
- A less partisan reason for the continued vitality of the rule relates to the nature of the common law itself. Common law rules operate at a very high level of factual generality, and are relatively unstructured and interconnected—the so-called “seamless web” of the common law. A carelessly drafted statute that alters one common law rule may have unanticipated effects on other common law rules, unless the alteration is narrowly construed.
- The drafter of statutes in derogation of the common law needs to fully understand the common law rule the statute will affect and draft with a pin-point focus.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 6. Legal Drafting Overview 32 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Some think of legal drafting principally in terms of writing the document. Although this is an important part of drafting, it is merely an intermediate part of a larger, more complex endeavor.
- Although the process can be broken down into a number of discrete steps, that characterization is somewhat misleading since it suggests a rigid, linear progress. Drafting is more circular than linear. A step once taken may have to be repeated as the drafted document evolves. This chapter will identify and briefly describe these steps, which will then be discussed in more detail in subsequent chapters.
- Easy reading is the result of hard drafting. Easy drafting is the result of hard thinking.
- The physical arrangement and appearance of a drafted document is more important than one might think. Look into a United States Statutes-at-Large volume from the late 1800s or resurrect from a firm’s client files a contract drafted in the 1920s. What you may see is a gray mass of page after page of sparsely paragraphed, dense prose without any bolded headings or subheadings. These documents are a nightmare to read. They should not be. A drafted document should be easy to read, easy to use as a reference, and easy to understand. Ample white space, numbered lists and enumerations, leader dots, tabbing and indentation, and numbered and captioned headings and subheadings all promote these objectives. These and other formatting techniques are discussed in Chapter 16.
- Determining the client’s objectives is the most important part of the drafting process. It will affect everything that follows. The objective of all drafted documents is to achieve some good or avoid some harm. But it is the client’s specific good to be achieved or harm to be avoided that counts, not some good or harm in an abstract sense. Until the drafter knows why the client wants the document, what purpose it is supposed to serve, and what problems it is expected to resolve or prevent, the drafter cannot begin to serve the client’s needs.
- Open Chapter
Preface 6 results (showing 5 best matches)
Chapter 2. Contract Drafting 23 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Transactional documents are an opportunity to prevent and plan for future litigation. You should think about how to integrate concepts from other sources and experiences into contracts. Transactional lawyers draft to fall within or to avoid the ambit of particular statutory or case law. What contract remedies would be available under the common law if the contract makes no provision for them? How can this common law result be altered in the contract? What is the evidentiary significance of various parts of the contract in later litigation? What can be done to render these portions admissible evidence? How can they be drafted so that they are favorable evidence for either party? Contract drafting provides an opportunity to use and reinforce a full range of substantive legal skills.
- A document can be drafted in plain English and still satisfy the requirements of the law and the purposes of the client. Avoid being a drafter who relies on less-than-plain language to achieve transactional ends. The plainer the language and the clearer the drafting organization, the more likely it is that the parties will not have differing interpretations of the contract. This should minimize the potential for litigation, or at least the risk of loss in litigation caused by a court adopting a different interpretation.
- In the private law context, contracts are probably the most common form of drafted document. Wills, trust agreements, and various corporate and business documents—all of which are very substantive-law specific—comprise the remainder. Within the contracts sub-category, various types of contracts also tend to be very substantive-law specific. The desired substance of any particular type of document is beyond the scope of this book. Nevertheless, some generalizations are possible about contract drafting.
- From the drafter’s perspective, contracts come in three basic types. In the first, offer, acceptance, and performance are virtually simultaneous—buying an orange at Sam’s fruit stand, for example. Drafted documents are often not used here, because no need exists for them. If, however, there are representations, warranties, covenants, or conditions that survive beyond the initial exchange, then drafted documents are appropriate for what is termed a “sign and close” deal.
- Thoughtless boilerplate can be an enormous problem if the deal goes south. Boilerplate provisions commonly come into effect when there is a problem or disagreement between the parties, so they must be carefully considered and drafted to ensure that they work correctly when they are needed most. They represent another opportunity for prelitigation planning, something that every lawyer must keep in mind when drafting documents.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 15. Terms Creating Legal Consequences 26 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The primary function of a drafted normative document is to create legal consequences. Most of the words in a drafted document relate to the substance of the legal consequence—the identity of the boat, the price, delivery, warranties as to fitness, and the like. But how is the reader to know that the contract created a duty and a right, rather than mere discretionary authority to sell and buy? These legal consequences are significantly different. The words that create these different legal consequences are of critical importance.
- Conditions must be carefully drafted and integrated into the rest of the contract. First, you must take care to draft the condition so its terms are clear. Take care to define the standards to be used
- Conditions must be carefully drafted and integrated into the rest of the contract. First, you must take care to draft the condition so its terms are
- Many default provisions include the concept of a right to cure—or fix—the default and avoid application of the remedies provided in the contract. Different cure periods can apply to different events of default, and the contract should specify when the cure period begins to run. In drafting, one of two approaches is used to provide cure rights. One either drafts a separate provision addressing the right to cure or builds the cure right into each event of default provision.
- Providing the proper legal consequences in a drafted normative document is a three-step process. First, the drafter must fully understand the client’s specific desires and broader objectives. Second, the drafter must then match those desires and objectives
- Open Chapter
Chapter 12. Avoiding Ambiguities 13 results (showing 5 best matches)
- provides a number of synonyms for the word “ambiguous” reflecting how this word is often used colloquially. These include “open to debate/arguable,” “abstruse,” “dubious,” and others. In drafting, however, the term is used in its formal, logical sense. That is what this chapter is about.
- Ambiguity is the greatest cause of litigation over drafted documents and litigation is always expensive, whether one wins or loses. The results of ambiguity-based litigation are always bad for someone. An ambiguity could be fatal to the efficacy of the document, rendering a contract or statute void, frustrating the objectives of the contracting parties or a legislative body. Or, a court might construe the ambiguity against the drafter, causing the client serious disadvantage and opening the door to a malpractice action. If the ambiguity was a deliberate contrivance to deceive, the drafter may also be guilty of an ethical violation. Ambiguity is fundamentally inconsistent with the central mission of drafting, which is to avoid problems without the need for expensive and often unsuccessful litigation.
- Bill and Mary cannot each separately exercise the option because the property cannot be sold twice. But the sentence could mean that they must do it jointly or it could mean, construing “and” to mean “or,” that either one of them can do it—presumably, whoever acts first. Depending on what the client intends, the drafter could draft it in one of the two following ways:
- Drafted documents often refer to time spans rather than specific dates. Precisely measuring the beginning or end of the time span can sometimes be difficult.
- And when drafting, include consequences of a failure to perform the duty, either by listing it as an event of default that may trigger a remedy or by specifying that failure to, for example, approve or disapprove performance by June 1, 2020, will not be deemed to be approval.
- Open Chapter
Chapter 14. Definitions 15 results (showing 5 best matches)
- Definitions tell the reader what a particular word or phrase means. Well drafted definitions promote clarity, brevity, and consistency. Definitions are properly used:
- Definitions are powerful medicine, and drafters should use them with care. A badly drafted definition will infect every portion of the document where the term is used. The drafter should keep the following considerations in mind when creating definitions.
- Second, the ordinary reader is even more likely to forget this strange definition and thus be misled by the contract. Indeed, when the defined meaning of a term is so at odds with its conventional or dictionary meaning, and when the defined meaning would work to the significant disadvantage of the party who did not draft the contract, a court might refuse to enforce the contract, on grounds of unconscionability.
- Fourth, when the text of a definition is buried in another statute, it is apt to be forgotten. The drafter may then draft something elsewhere in the document that is inconsistent with that definition. Similarly, persons affected by the new statute may ignore it altogether, to their disadvantage.
- Under this definition, a horse-drawn carriage would not be included. This might be a significant omission if the drafter were drafting an ordinance dealing with traffic congestion around Central Park in New York City or the French Quarter of New Orleans.
- Open Chapter
Appendix 18 results (showing 5 best matches)
Title Page 1 result
Also by the Authors 3 results
Center Title 1 result
Chapter 8. Drafting Within the Law 9 results (showing 5 best matches)
- The law also affects the substance of drafted documents.
- Private law documents can also operate by way of prohibition on other private law documents. For example, a contract may effectively prohibit the delegation of duties or assignment of rights under that contract. The drafter needs to know this before attempting to draft a document purporting to do either.
- A drafter cannot count on remembering everything that the law prohibits, requires, permits, denies authority for, attaches meaning to, or implies. Thus, the drafter’s knowledge must be systematized. A legal checklist is an indispensable drafting tool.
- Drafting with Statutory Language in Mind
- Tracking specific statutory language is sometimes necessary to achieve a desired result. For example, a merger or “integration” clause is designed to trigger the operation of the parol evidence rule, by stating that what is written represents the final and exclusive terms of the agreement between the parties. An effective merger clause can be drafted in a variety of ways. However, in a contract for the sale of goods, a drafter should follow the language of
- Open Chapter
Index 20 results (showing 5 best matches)
Outline 25 results (showing 5 best matches)
About the Authors 1 result
- ...of Law. He holds a J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, an M.B.A. from The University of San Diego, and a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Before joining the UT faculty in 2000, he was a partner in the Allen Matkins firm’s San Diego office. Previously he practiced with the Howard Rice and Morrison & Foerster firms in his hometown of San Francisco, doing litigation and transactional work largely in the context of business restructuring and insolvency. He teaches business law courses including Business Associations, Contracts, Contract Drafting, Commercial Leasing, Commercial Law, Consumer Bankruptcy, Debtor-Creditor, Mergers and Acquisitions, Representing Enterprises, and Workouts and Reorganizations. Kuney writes books and articles about business, contracts, commercial law, and insolvency-related topics. He also advises clients, consults, and serves as an expert witness regarding bankruptcy, contracts, agency and...
- Open Chapter
- Publication Date: December 21st, 2020
- ISBN: 9781684675289
- Subject: Legal Writing
- Series: Nutshells
- Type: Overviews
- Description: Legal Drafting in a Nutshell, 5th Edition, provides guidance on producing transactional documents, contracts, instruments, legislation, and regulations that solve existing problems and prevent future problems. The book provides both a large scale, macro overview of the drafting process as well as small scale, micro focused discussion of the mechanics of legal documents at the sentence, word, and punctuation level. The book incorporates current and developing perspectives regarding subjects like plain English, legal typography, and document preparation in the 21st century. This is especially the case in sections of the text dealing with contracts and instruments, although it is true throughout the text. Legal drafting is as much a thought process as a writing process; clear thinking leads to clear drafting. This book is a guide for clear, structured thinking about drafting in order to provide readers with a structured process to follow when assembling useful legal documents.
