Why do we lawyers bother to get documents exactly right, spending many “happy” hours making sure that not only is the essence of the deal captured in the document but that all defined terms are capitalised and used consistently (even in the technical schedules) and that all of the cross references work. Surely this is just pedantic and everybody knows what the document means.
One of the most prestigious law firms in the world is the New York practice Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Its co-founder Martin Lipton was famous for inventing the “poison pill” in the corporate world - a key defence strategy used against hostile takeovers. This is a firm to go to if you are betting your company. They have a very low partner associate ratio and go the extra mile on every deal with a line of limousines outside their offices early in the morning to take their exhausted workers home. If you receive a draft from them you will know it has been carefully crafted and endlessly checked.
I think that without this attention to detail and precision in drafting and analysis you can’t ever truly master your job. Show me a draft legal agreement with spelling mistakes (that’s what spellcheckers are for!) and I guarantee I will discover a more fundamental failing.
Lionel Messi one of the greatest footballers ever said that In football as in watchmaking, talent and elegance mean nothing without rigour and precision.
I propose that clarity of drafting it is not pedantry but a necessary professional discipline which we can all aspire to and achieve. When I started practicing the only way to check one long document against another was to get two trainees to sit down opposite each other, with one reading the new version and the other checking the old. Nowadays we are very fortunate to be supported by document comparison tools and an ever-increasing array of technology that will increasingly go much further to assist us, but we ultimately are the arbiters of the document we send out and should take whatever steps are required to ensure this.
And it can really matter to your client. The London barrister and author Dr. Michael Arnheim cites this story: During the First World War, Sir Roger Casement was charged with treason. But the question was: Did the law apply to acts of treason performed abroad? The answer depended on whether there was a pair of commas in the relevant section. The Act was so old that this was not clear, but the judges went down to the Public Record Office and looked up the old parchment Statute rolls, where they found markings that they interpreted as punctuation. As a result Sir Roger Casement was almost literally "hanged by a comma." The moral of the story is: do not neglect punctuation.
One of the most prestigious law firms in the world is the New York practice Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Its co-founder Martin Lipton was famous for inventing the “poison pill” in the corporate world - a key defence strategy used against hostile takeovers. This is a firm to go to if you are betting your company. They have a very low partner associate ratio and go the extra mile on every deal with a line of limousines outside their offices early in the morning to take their exhausted workers home. If you receive a draft from them you will know it has been carefully crafted and endlessly checked.
I think that without this attention to detail and precision in drafting and analysis you can’t ever truly master your job. Show me a draft legal agreement with spelling mistakes (that’s what spellcheckers are for!) and I guarantee I will discover a more fundamental failing.
Lionel Messi one of the greatest footballers ever said that In football as in watchmaking, talent and elegance mean nothing without rigour and precision.
I propose that clarity of drafting it is not pedantry but a necessary professional discipline which we can all aspire to and achieve. When I started practicing the only way to check one long document against another was to get two trainees to sit down opposite each other, with one reading the new version and the other checking the old. Nowadays we are very fortunate to be supported by document comparison tools and an ever-increasing array of technology that will increasingly go much further to assist us, but we ultimately are the arbiters of the document we send out and should take whatever steps are required to ensure this.
And it can really matter to your client. The London barrister and author Dr. Michael Arnheim cites this story: During the First World War, Sir Roger Casement was charged with treason. But the question was: Did the law apply to acts of treason performed abroad? The answer depended on whether there was a pair of commas in the relevant section. The Act was so old that this was not clear, but the judges went down to the Public Record Office and looked up the old parchment Statute rolls, where they found markings that they interpreted as punctuation. As a result Sir Roger Casement was almost literally "hanged by a comma." The moral of the story is: do not neglect punctuation.
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