LAWS 3231 Contract Drafting

This course provides a foundation for drafting contracts, a skill critical for all lawyers. Lawyers are writers. A big part of that writing consists of contracts, not just for transactional lawyers but also including litigators, family lawyers, regulatory lawyers (both government and private practice), and others. This class covers both the why of various contract parts and technical writing skills. Thus the course will examine contractual covenants, representations and warranties, conditions, remedies, choice of law and other provisions. Technical topics include structuring contracts and crisp drafting of substantive terms and definitions. To meet the upper-level writing requirement, after learning the various topics and drafting techniques, students will draft various contracts from scratch that together meet the 30-page minimum. That will be the primary component of the grading, and there will also be a significant class participation portion of the grade.