Customer Reviews

Manual of Style for Contract Drafting

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If you practice law, buy this book and use it. Please. I beg you. Judges beg you. The other side begs you (that would be me again). Your clients beg you (although they don't know it yet). Ken Adams has given a lot of thought about writing contracts; not the rules themselves, but how to write rules and ultimately create a document that isn't a torture to write or, more importantly, to read.

Law school never taught you how to actually write a contract, which would explain why most of us are just copying what others have been doing for centuries. Conventions that made sense before photocopiers and word processors make no sense today. Stop doing them and learn how and what to do instead with this indispensable book for anyone charged with writing contracts.

Honestly, this book has saved me. I'm a litigator by training, yet I recently changed my career to become a corporate lawyer. Not having much experience in drafting contracts, this book really helped me, and I use it frequently, especially when drafting a contract without a precedent. Really useful, written for lawyers, by a lawyer. The only "downside" for non-American lawyers is that it's written by an American, so any case law it cites is generally American caselaw. Of course, that's not to fault the book; it just means I need to also get a book with legal Canadian caselaw that complements this book. I'm looking forward to attending the author's contract drafting workshops, which are also held in Canada and typically sold-out, I hear.