Posts Tagged ‘Ken Adams’

Ken Adams is the leading authority on modern and effective contract drafting, and I’m one of the many happy readers of his blog, Adams Drafting.

The blog focuses entirely on words, and how they effect the meaning of contracts.

Too frequently, lawyers draft contract documents by resurrecting a form from their database and changing party names.   While a lawyer may spend hours inspecting a contract’s wording when a dispute has arisen, they infrequently spend time inspecting the words when drafting the agreement.

Ken examines words and phrases used frequently in contracts, and discusses the problems they may cause.

Ever think about the word “specific” in a contract?   Ken’s post on the word specific discusses how it “more often than not…serves no purpose.”

Or what about the combination of words in a contract…we frequently see the terms “fraud” and “intentional misrepresentation” used in a contract together.  Ken asks, doesn’t these two words mean the same thing?  And if so, why use both of them?

The Adams Drafting blog also has good tips on contract layout issues, like how to number pages and what to put in a contract’s header and footer.

Words are so important to the practice of law, and as such, every lawyer should at least be thinking about their use of words.   Adams Drafting is a great resource for this.

But Adams Drafting is not just for lawyers.  Contractors and those in the construction business sign contracts left and right – sometimes they write those contracts, sometimes they negotiate its provisions, and sometimes they sign a provided form agreement.   They too can benefit from this blog’s discussion of words, and how they can affect agreements.