Drafting Contracts

A perfect fit for the upper-level legal drafting course, Drafting
Contracts: How and Why Lawyers Do What They Do teaches the key practices
of contract drafting, with particular emphasis on how to incorporate the
business deal into the contract and add value to the client¿s deal. By
providing many solid examples of quality writing, the book helps students to
master the basics and to incorporate similar techniques into their own
drafting. This text is also appropriate for use in transactional simulation
courses, transactional clinics, advanced writing courses, first-year writing
courses, first year-contracts courses, and interviewing, negotiating, and
counseling courses.
Many great features ensure the value and reliability of this text:
PART I: introduces the building blocks of contracts and teaches the analytic
skill of ¿translating the business deal into contract concepts¿ so that
students learn how and why a drafter chooses a specific contract concept
PART II: sets out the framework of an agreement and works through it from the
preamble to the signature lines, discussing the business, legal, and drafting
issues that occur in each part of a contract
PART III: turns to drafting rules for good writing and to techniques for
enhancing clarity and avoiding ambiguity
PART IV: details how to look at the contract from the client¿s
perspective¿what does the client want to achieve and what risks does it want
to avoid¿in order to find and resolve business issues
PART V: shows students how to integrate everything they have learned: how to
organize a contract, how to use precedents, and how to review and comment on a
contract
PART VI: addresses ethical issues that arise in drafting
PART VII: provides additional exercises
presents a five-prong framework for considering business issues that appear in
almost every transaction: money, risk, control, standards, and endgame
(Chapter 17, ¿Adding Value to the Deal¿)
includes plentiful examples of well-drafted provisions, many based on
commercial agreements
provides exercises for use in or out of class, individually or
collaboratively, including contract mark-ups, new drafting, and both combined
into a single exercise
integrates a single fact pattern throughout many exercises in the book¿the
purchase of a jet by a ne¿er-do-well with significant financial problems¿and
varying fact patterns relating to employment relationships and to assignment
and delegation provisions.
accompanied by a Teacher¿s Manual that includes notes explaining the answers
to each exercise and answers to questions that students commonly ask.
also accompanied by a website that provides all mark-up exercises that can be
projected and walked through during class, a template for formatting, and
multiple versions of one of the culminating exercises so that professors can
use the version best suited to their classes
An author website to support classroom instruction using this title is
available at
http://www.aspenlawschool.com/stark