Why Are Contracts So Poorly Written?
The Lawyers Weekly has this interview with Kenneth Adams, contract drafting guru and publisher of an excellent blog on drafting.
A few notable quotes:
As most lawyers would readily admit, the typical contract is chock full of archaic terms, myriad redundancies, awkward phrasing, unintended ambiguity and meaningless boilerplate. Yet lawyers tend to be reasonably well-educated, literate and analytical. Which begs the question: why are contracts so poorly written?
“Junior lawyers are expected to learn drafting by osmosis without rigorous training and without reference to any set of rules. That results in junior associates’ learning all sorts of bad habits and before too long those bad habits become the normal way of doing things,” Adams explains.
“An enormous amount of litigation has its roots in deficient drafting,” Adams says.
“Many lawyers like the idea of contracts sounding mystical,” Adams posits. “You’d be doing yourself and your reader a favour by getting rid of such stuff [archaisms like witnesseth].”
