Often when small or medium sized businesses who are contract dependent are dealing with their customers, one of the most difficult things to understand is how the layout of a contract improves the overall quality of the contract. Recently, there has been a trend in the legal world that lawyers...
Contracts
#mattthelawyer, Contracts, Design / 06.12.2019
Information Design in Contracts
How many times have you looked at a lengthy contract and thought to yourself – I really don’t have the time for this; I don’t understand this. Often times, non-lawyer folk want to understand the basic facts and leave technicalities of contracts to their lawyers or business advisors. Sometimes,...
#mattthelawyer, Contracts / 12.08.2019
Write a “Plain English” Contract
As a small business lawyer, I am often asked, “Do you write plain English contracts?” If I am feeling particularly snarky and I know the person well enough to be snarky, I might shoot back with “well, I don’t write contracts in Spanish, Latin, or...
Non-Compete Agreements are everywhere. Most non-competes I see are not only poorly written (a style problem) and probably unenforceable against the employee (a drafting problem). Most employers take a one-size-fits-all approach and have all employees sign the exact same non-compete. Employers wanting employees to sign...
#mattthelawyer, Contracts / 24.07.2019
What You Need to Know about Non-Compete Agreements & At-Will Employment
One of the most difficult things for companies looking to have key employees, or any employees, sign a non-compete agreement is that most states have at-will employment. While at-will employment is highly beneficial in terms of labor market movement and the ability for employers to...
One aspect of dealing with creative and service-based industries, as I often do, is that many employers have a non-compete agreement for their employees. I understand the desire and sometimes the need for the agreement. But as a class of agreements, non-compete agreements are among...
#mattthelawyer, Contracts / 19.07.2019
Do you actually need an NDA?
Non-disclosure agreements (NDA) have a habit of driving me nuts. In this ten minute video I talk about the overuse of NDAs and how to determine if you actually need the NDA. https://youtu.be/qpIfbHRIHbo ...
#mattthelawyer, Contracts / 24.06.2019
Writing Skills for Contracts
This month, #Mattthelawyer was a guest on the Insights from Casetext podcast with Mike Whalen. In this podcast they talk about how lawyers can write better contracts, fulfill their clients needs through quality contracts, and use a language that everyone can understand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=431cz-V1IZ8&feature=youtu.be ...
#mattthelawyer, Contracts / 10.06.2019
Clear Definitions in Contracts
I have another contract rant to get out of my system. I was reading through the blog of one of my favorite writers, Ken Adams, who is the author and editor of Manual of Style for Contract Drafting, which I use heavily when writing contracts. Ken...