ONLINE: Contract Drafting Skills Workshop

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ONLINE: Contract Drafting Skills Workshop

This 6-hour practical workshop is designed to help you improve your contract drafting skills over two half-day sessions

By UCL Institute of Brand and Innovation Law (IBIL)

Select date and time

Starts on Tue, 11 Jun 2024 01:45 PDT

Location

Online

Refund Policy

Contact the organiser to request a refund.
Eventbrite's fee is nonrefundable.

About this event

Do you want your contract drafting to be clear, correct, concise and consistent? Do you want your contracts to be understood, and interpreted correctly, by multiple “stakeholders”, including project managers, business executives, lawyers and, if a dispute over the contract reaches court, a judge?

Course summary

This practical, one-day course is designed to help you improve your contract drafting skills. It combines teaching on modern drafting techniques with multiple, practical exercises to help you apply that teaching and improve your drafting. We provide a relaxed environment in which to look carefully at drafting issues, away from the pressure of negotiations.

If you are good at general business or legal writing, your skills will get you some of the way to drafting contracts well. But the mix of techniques used in good contract drafting is unique. We will discuss when to use and when to reject general writing techniques for contract drafting.

By looking at examples of good and bad contract wording, we will explore what works and what doesn’t, and how apparently satisfactory wording can be tweaked to remove ambiguities and uncertainties. In doing so, we will keep in mind the four Cs - four objectives that are sometimes underrated or overlooked: clarity, correctness (accuracy), conciseness and consistency.

We will also consider how the courts interpret contracts, but this won’t be the primary focus of the day. It is often better to draft clearly and in a way that avoids litigation, than to focus solely on how to “win” in court.

Please note: this is a course about learning and applying techniques to improve contract drafting. There is a greater emphasis on practice than theory. It is not focussed on any one practice area (though it will be informed by the course leader’s experience, over 30 years, of drafting commercial contracts where intellectual property issues are important). It is not designed to help you do a better commercial deal, outsmart an opponent, or persuade a court to uphold a one-sided clause (e.g. to make an extreme liability clause seem “reasonable” for the purposes of UCTA).

Benefits of attending this course

By attending this course you will:

  • Gain a better understanding of common drafting mistakes and pitfalls
  • Learn techniques for drafting clearer contracts
  • Practise your drafting skills by working on multiple, practical exercises
  • Receive feedback on how to improve your drafting

Feedback from recent course

  • "Multiple and helpful examples given from practice - helps bring theory to life"
  • "Very clear, friendly and approachable. Great personal examples and practical tips"
  • "Enjoyable Course. The time flew by. Interesting and Interactive"

Schedule:

DAY ONE:

09:45 Introduction: Who are we writing for; their expectations; should we meet them?

10:00 Improving clarity (teaching and exercises)

[Comfort break around 10:45]

Improving accuracy (teaching and exercises)

[Comfort break around 11:45]

13:00 Day one ends

DAY TWO

09:45 How the courts interpret contracts, including the “canons of construction”.

10.30 Using and avoiding legal jargon, and legal terms of art

[comfort break at around 11:00]

11.30 Improving consistency and being concise (teaching and exercises)

[comfort break at around 12:00

12.15 Putting it all together: identifying drafting problems (and solutions) in commonly-used template agreements

13:00 Course finishes

View details of the course tutor and other information on our website

Organised by

The Institute of Brand and Innovation Law was established in 2007 to reflect UCL’s strategy of expanding its activity in the field of intellectual property law. IBIL is based in the UCL Faculty of Laws and its Director is The Rt Hon Professor Sir Robin Jacob who was appointed to the Sir Hugh Laddie Chair in IP Law in 2011. 

IBIL is sponsored by:

  • Mishcon de Reya;  
  • 8 New Square;
  • and Bristows LLP; Carpmaels & Ransford LLP; Clifford Chance LLP; Freshfield Bruckhaus Deringer LLP; Gowling WLG (UK) LLP; Marks and Clerk LLP; Mayer Brown LLP; Powell Gilbert LLP; and Simmons & Simmons LLP

For information about the Institute please see their website at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/ibil  

£510 – £600