28 Wednesday Dec 2016
Posted in Humor
≈ Comments Off on It’s New Years’ Eve. Time Again for The Capitol Steps!
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It is that time again. The Capitol Steps New Year’s Eve broadcast is coming to a radio station near you. Find the time and radio station at their website: http://www.capsteps.com/radio/.
The Capitol Steps do two free broadcasts each year: New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July. If you are not familiar with this group, check it out: http://www.capsteps.com/about/. Enjoy! -CCE
25 Sunday Dec 2016
Posted in Contract Law, Dispute Resolution, Legal Writing, Settlement
≈ Comments Off on “How To” On Drafting Dispute Resolution Agreements.
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Dispute Resolution, John M. Newman, Legal Skills Prof Blog, Legal Writing, Louis J. Sirico Jr., Settlement Agreements, SSRN
Drafting for Dispute Resolution, by John M. Newman, SSRN (with hat tip to Louis J. Sirico, Jr., Director of Legal Writing, Villanova Univ. School of Law, Legal Skills Prof Blog)
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2867692
Not all cases end in litigation and go to trial. At times, the best service counsel can give to clients is an out-of-court resolution. Careful drafting of an agreement between the parties includes numerous considerations to protect your client and to assure acceptance by everyone involved. Definitely worth a bookmark. -CCE
This is a brief guide to drafting for dispute resolution. Topics covered include mandatory-arbitration provisions, class waivers, choice of law, choice of venue, exculpatory and liquidated-damages clauses, fee and cost allocations, and more. . . .
This guide seeks to concisely identify and explore, from a transactional perspective, the relevant questions, considerations, and law relating to these powerful tools. It also provides illustrative examples of well-drafted provisions, often drawn from real-world legal instruments. . . .
21 Wednesday Dec 2016
Posted in FastCase, LexisNexis, Westlaw
≈ Comments Off on LexisNexis’ Next-Generation Solution Means End of Lexis.com.
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It’s Last Rites for Lexis.com, As LexisNexis Sets Date for Shutdown, by Robert Ambrogi, LawSites Blog
http://www.lawsitesblog.com/2016/12/last-rites-lexis-com-lexisnexis-sets-date-shutdown.html
“Prepare last rites for Lexis.com. The legacy legal research service will be leaving this world at the end of 2017.
This week, LexisNexis began notifying Lexis.com customers that it will be shutting down the service over the next 12 months and moving them to the newer Lexis Advance research platform.”
12 Monday Dec 2016
Posted in Bad Legal Writing, Editing, Judges, Legal Argument, Legal Writing, Legalese, Persuasive Writing, Plain Language, Readability
≈ Comments Off on Plain English Legal Writing – Proof Positive That It Works.
The Proof is in the Reading, Plain Language Works Best, by Joseph Kimble, 52 Mich. B J. (Oct. 2016)
http://www.michbar.org/file/barjournal/article/documents/pdf4article2972.pdf
Joseph Kimble has long been recognized as one of the top legal writing scholars. In this Plain English column of the Michigan Bar Journal (every Bar Journal should have one!), Professor Kimble offers evidence once again that readers, including judges, prefer plain language and why. -CCE
To help round out this plain-English theme issue of the Bar Journal, I offer the evidence of four studies. These four are among 50 that I collect and summarize in my book Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please: The Case for Plain Language in Business, Government, and Law. Of the 50 studies, 18 involved different kinds of legal documents—lawsuit papers, judicial opinions, statutes, regulations, jury instructions, court forms and notices, and contracts. And they included readers of all sorts—judges, lawyers, administrators, and the general public. The evidence is overwhelming: readers strongly prefer plain language to legalese, understand it better and faster, are more likely to comply with it, and are more likely to read it to begin with. —JK
08 Thursday Dec 2016
Posted in Editing, Legal Writing, Legalese, Readability
≈ Comments Off on Legal Writing – Why Shorter is Better.
Make it shorter … and shorter …, by Tiffany Johnson, Good Legal Writing Blog
https://goodlegalwriting.com/2011/02/11/make-it-shorter-and-shorter/
Regardless of whether, in your own opinion, you are a good writer, we can always improve. Here is an opportunity to polish your skills, take note of some bad habits, and hone your editing technique. -CCE
Here’s a good exercise to promote plain writing and dense writing. The object is to force you to purge your writing of any words that don’t work their butts off on your behalf. Take the following sentence and reduce it to as few words as humanly possible, without changing the meaning of the sentence. Shortest re-write wins a prize (respect)!
04 Sunday Dec 2016
Posted in Appellate Writing, Contract Law, Legal Writing
≈ Comments Off on Contract Interpretation and Ambiguity.
Judicial Disagreement Over Contract Ambiguity: When Are Things OBVIOUS? By Stacey Lantagne, ContractsProf Blog
We’ve been talking about contract interpretation in my Contracts class lately and I’m always struck by how many cases involve a lower court ruling of ambiguity and then an appellate court reversal of that ruling, because it always strikes me as such a funny thing. The very definition of ambiguity would seem to be ‘multiple people disagreeing on the meaning of the word,’ but the appellate court decisions in those cases necessarily have to dismiss the reasonableness of the lower court’s understanding of the meaning in order to assert that the meaning is SO OBVIOUS.
The Researching Paralegal 
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