Effective Legal Writing and Drafting Course

The Effective Legal Writing and Drafting Course will cover the following topics and more:

Legal Drafting 

• Signs of a well drafted contract: The simple rules!
• The language of drafting: Will v Shall v Must
• Identifying the legal formalities for a binding contract
• Structure and formation of a commercial contract: follow the formula and you won’t go wrong
• The importance of Boilerplate clauses:

1. No waiver
2. Notices
3. Assignment v Novation
4. Governing v Jurisdiction
5. Force majeure - are we covered for viruses (covid19)?

• Dispute resolution clause: Litigation v Arbitration v Mediation
• The preliminary documents in international transaction - using Heads of Terms effectively
• Vague words and expressions in commercial contracts- know the pitfalls!
• Best endeavours v All reasonable endeavours v reasonable endeavours
• Overview of cross border contracts: Distribution v Joint venture v Agency agreements
• Share Purchase Agreements
• Warranties and indemnities

1. Allocating risks and liabilities between the buyer and seller
2. Negotiating warranties from a Share Purchase Agreement 

Plain English in Legal Correspondence

• Good legal writing practice
• Moving from legalese to Plain English
• Unnecessary archaic and meaningless phrases
• Collocations

1. Importance of collocations in legal writing

• Pitfalls and issues relating to the use of legal jargon in legal writing
• Writing short emails
• Writing long emails
• Writing formal emails

Writing A Legal Letter

• Layout of a letter
• Body of a letter
• Putting a letter together
• The register of letter writing
• Typical sentences in legal letters
• The letter writing clinic: looking at the ten most common problems
• Rewriting letters
• Rewriting informal sentences to modern alternatives
• Correcting common mistakes in letter writing

Legal Writing Troubleshooting

• The problem of English idioms
• Rephrasing English idioms
• Easily confused words
• Cutting unnecessary words
• Use of consistent terminology
• Ambiguity: how to avoid it
• Vagueness: how to avoid it
• Misuse of preposition in dates
• Problem words
• Constantly litigated words
• Rewriting sentences to remove gender specific language

Course Booking

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