On Becoming a “Rock Star” Contracts Lawyer

“Career Path” is an overused term to describe how we should conduct our professional lives to reach our full potential. In my experience, most self-help books on this subject assume that we have more control over our lives than we actually do. The old adage, “Man proposes, God disposes” is not evident in these books. And yet there are ways for a contracts lawyer to reach his or her full potential. This post will focus on one of the most important: the ability to detect and correct typographical errors in one’s work product.

Is there anything more rewarding to a contracts lawyer than catching a typographical error? Of course not. I once did a long and complicated real estate agreement, pondering the implications of the Rule Against Perpetuities and the Rule in Shelley’s Case, only to have my client point out the fact that on Page 39, Section 1, Paragraph A, subsection (i), clause (z) of the contract I drafted, the word “thee” should be “the.” I can’t tell you enough about  the warm fuzzy feeling that this observation created in my heart! 

At best, typographical errors are embarasing for the contracts lawyer; at  worst, they can cause one’s client major bucks, fodder for the trial lawyers to argue over as the meter runs on their exorbitant hourly fees.

As proof that the contracts lawyer who catches typos is “Rock Star” lawyer grade, I could cite several recent real world examples. Instead, however, I will invite you to click on this short documentary video from the folks at bitterlawyer.com: 

The only unfortunate side effect is that catching typos isn’t sexy.

Thanks for blogging with me thus far. And to all those longsuffering contracts lawyers in the New Year, may you catch typos and attain your romantic career potential, too.

If On A Winter’s Night:The Definitive Xmas CD

Each year, we try to find new Xmas music that will enrich our souls. This year, after being horrified by Bob Dylan’s Christmas in the Heart, we discovered Sting’s non-traditional If On A Winter’s Night. Rather than have me rattle on about the 15 inspiring and mysterious tracks on this disc, just click on the YouTube video below to hear excerpts from some of the tracks and Sting’s reasons for doing this piece. If you only purchase one Xmas CD this year, this is the one.

The sure-fire recipe for Xmas spirit this year is the following, in this order:

• Give your time or money or both to at least one charity. Be thankful that you have one or both of these items to give.
• Put Sting’s CD on your stereo system
• Have a bit of brandy or a formidable red wine. For the former, I recommend Cardenal Mendoza Solera Gran Reserva. For the latter, I recommend Franciscan Cab Sauvignon.
• Find a fireplace. Gas, wood, or coal. Get it going, careful not to ignite surrounding articles such as the Xmas Tree.
• Repair yourself and a significant other in front of said fire with a healthy dollop of said brandy or wine.

If after a few minutes of exposure to the above you don’t find yourself in the Xmas spirit, find the nearest mental institution and commit yourself for an indefinite stay.

Happy Xmas, and thanks for blogging with me thus far.

October Road Trip, Terrifically Cheap Cotes du Rhone, Pesky Red Fox, ND wins in OT

So it was that we ventured to Leelanau County, Glen Arbor Michigan, last weekend for a short stay at a Homestead Condominium overlooking Glen Arbor and the Sleeping Bear Dunes.

Having found time to watch Notre Dame beat Washington in OT(the “Luck ‘O the Irish” having returned with ND holding off Washington from scoring a TD from the 2-yard line 8 times), I had a rare moment when I became convinced that all was well with the world, aided by a few glasses of a remarkable $5.99 per bottle (not a typo) wine: Louis Bernard Bonus Passus Cotes du Rhone 2007. This wine did not sell very well because first, it comes in a plastic bottle with a screw-top cap (perfect for picnics but not for setting an impressive ambience) and second, it comes in one of those short bottles, so you think that you are not getting the usual hit. (Not so.) At any rate, this wine does most of what Dot and John think a Cotes du Rhone should do at 10 times the cost. (If you want my source for this and live in the West Michigan area, send me an email, but the supply could be exhausted by now.)

This wine also helped erase my close encounter with a red fox as I walked up to the condo. The critter sauntered by and sat down between me and the stairway in, and when I walked away, he followed me. When I stopped, he sat down and scratched an itch. When I started walking again, he started toward me. Didn’t appear aggressive (or rabid) - probably used to hand-outs of nibbles. In any event, I opened my handy red Swiss umbrella, pointed it at him as if it were a Star Wars light saber, and he got the message to bug off.

October in Northern Michigan is fantastic. Those who don’t take advantage of our fall colors and lake views are missing a lot. Next year, we’ll try for a longer stay. A few pics of the trip (sans fox) are to the right.

Thanks for blogging with me thus far.

Summer ‘09 Quaffing – What’s in Your Wine Rack?

Although at times football weather, Summer is here, and that means a temporary abandonment of the heavier reds and stronger whites for lighter fare. Here’s a list of our favorites this Summer; as usual, all of these are moderately priced (under $20, because last I checked, the TARP money hadn’t yet been deposited) and all are dry:

Whites: Forget Chard, Pinot Gris, and Sauvignon Blanc, we’ve been enjoying a Vermentino from Sardinia, the 2007 Argiolas Costamolino.

•  
• This is a dry white that  balances acidity with tropical fruit and is not aged in wood. It pairs well with a cold pasta salad containing fresh veggies. Also goes well with spicy Asian dishes.  

 

 

Reds: The winner this Summer is Cosantino Winery’s The  Med (2005), a blend of Mediterranean grape varietals

This wine is not a heavy red. It pairs well with any pasta in a red sauce or pizza. The notes are cherries, tamarind, and ripe tannins. The wine is barrel-aged for 7 months, but the oak taste is subtle.

In second place, I would put an inexpensive yet well done French Bordeaux from the Medoc appellation: the 2005 Chateau La Lauzette

This is a cab-based blend that can be drunk young or ensconced on your wine rack to drink several years from now. It has only a hint of the French barnyard notes that drive us crazy if overdone.

Coffee! A beverage that you can enjoy at 7 AM on a Saturday in July. As I write this, I’m finishing up a cup of Summer Solstice Blend from Intelligentsia. This is direct trade coffee from our favorite coffee purveyor (take that Starbucks!) As the vendor says, this coffee with its butterscotch notes is reminiscent of a great Chardonnay.

So, what are you drinking this Summer and why? Let me know.

My goal is to update this Blog more often, but with several colleagues on vacation, guess who fills in?

Thanks for blogging with me thus far!

Just the Fax Ma’am – What Drafters of Contracts Ponder in the Wee Hours

As a kid, I was much impressed by how Detective Joe Friday (Jack Webb) in Dragnet could calm even the most hysterical of female witnesses to heinous criminal acts with his deadpan, “Just the facts, ma’am.”  I resolved that I too would use this phrase to calm down my mother when she stridently decided that Summer mornings were better spent doing household chores (or even worse, practicing the piano)  than watching the 9AM “Early Show” on Channel 8 with such classics as A Night at the Opera, Twelve O’Clock High, and Stagecoach…

Let’s just say that this phrase worked better out of the mouth of Joe Friday than 9-year old Chaddie Busk.

But I digress. As a contracts lawyer, we now ponder the weighty question in the AdamsDrafting Blog of whether, in a contractual notice provision, the drafter should use “telecopier,” “fax,” or “facsimile” to describe “legal” notices sent by this device. After some discussion, Ken Adams (a contracts scholar par excellence), concludes that the term “fax” is  now perfectly appropriate even in formal contexts. 

Unfortunately, lawyers never agree on anything, which is why, with few exceptions, I try to avoid their company. (I occasionally get a brochure to take a cruise with my fellow lawyers, and they immediately go into the trash. Can you imagine being on a cruise ship with all lawyers, hitting an iceberg and then deciding who gets to go in the lifeboat as opposed to treading water? Yikes!)  So, I felt compelled to post the following comment on Ken’s Blog:

I have an easy solution to this problem: leave out notice via fax, facsimile, or telecopier entirely. My company has only a few fax machines on each floor of its headquarters, and it is not unheard of that an important letter sent via fax has languished in a fax machine because no one bothered to check the machine, or the letter was picked up by mistake by the wrong addressee. In my opinion, the best way to assure effective contractual notices is either by overnight courier or US certified mail, return receipt requested.

Then there is the matter of email notices. I allow for email notices as valid if and when acknowledged by the recipient and sent to a generic email address (e.g., legal-notices@ yourcompany.com) which comes to me (in the Legal Department) or another attorney when I am unavailable.

Finally, as other commentators point out, the era of the fax machine is coming to a close, so the tried and true notice provision allowing for faxed, facsimile, or telecopied notices requires updating.

To which Ken kindly responded:

Chad: I acknowledge in my post that fax is unlikely to be with us much longer. And your comment reminds me that I should tackle the question of email notices. Ken

Thanks for blogging with me thus far.

UFO Wine Captured, Probed, Le Disappointing

After my last post lamented that Le Cigare Volant 2003 the “UFO Wine” could not be found in West Michigan, I happened to find it at a local wine merchant after all and picked up a bottle for around US $30. Normally, this price point for wine is high for me, but since I had a coupon for 20% off (in exchange for my email address, I guess everyone has his price!), I picked up a bottle and with some excellent homemade lasagna and fig salad, uncorked unscrewed the cap with much anticipation. But rather than be abducted by a sublime mixture of ripe fruits, dark chocolate and a hint of tobacco, my palate was greeted instead with a fairly ordinary red wine blend. Blah. Those little gray aliens were smart not to land in the California vineyard producing that wine; the buggers appear to have discriminating taste buds after all, apart from the cattle mutilations, of course.

However, unless corked (ha, no chance of that with a screw top), each bottle of wine can be appreciated to some extent.  As Maya remarked in Sideways (and this is one of the best wine quotes ever):

I like to think about what was going on the year the grapes were growing; how the sun was shining; if it rained. I like to think about all the people who tended and picked the grapes. And if it's an old wine, how many of them must be dead by now. I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I'd opened it on any other day, because a bottle of wine is actually alive. And it's constantly evolving and gaining complexity. That is, until it peaks, like your '61. And then it begins its steady, inevitable decline.

So, even though the “UFO wine” was not out of this world, it was still well, wine for God’s sake, and something to be savored with good food, family and friends.

Thanks for blogging with me thus far.

Finally! The Perfect Wine and UFO Pairing

Picture yourself in a vineyard nearly the sleepy town of Chateauneuf-du-Pape in France’s Rhone region. It is a hot, cloudless day in September, 1954. Ostensibly, nothing is going on to disturb the dignity and repose of the ripening grapes. Suddenly, you see a cloud forming on the horizon, and it is growing much too quickly as it heads straight for the vineyard. Hovering over the winemaker’s chateau, what can only be described as a UFO  emerges from the cloud and proceeds to send a destructive death ray on the helpless vines below. Mon Dieu! Shall we call out the Gendarmerie! No, they will likely be ineffectual against this otherworldly assault on the lifeblood of France. Here’s an idea, LET’S PASS A LAW FORBIDDING UFOS FROM LANDING IN THE VINEYARD!   Which is exactly what the City Council of Chateauneuf-du Pape did in 1954 to keep those pesky aliens from molesting the grapes from their cigar-like spaceships!   And as a result, alien spacecraft have avoided  those vineyards ever since, and we can all rest easier knowing that those fantastic Rhone wines will forever be in good supply for imbibing by carbon-based life forms.

Like any lover of wine and science fiction, I’ve spent countless hours wondering what wine would pair well with UFO watching. Finally, the above vintage from Bonny Doon Vineyard should serve nicely and is California winemaker Randall Grahm’s (a/k/a The Rhone Ranger) tribute to the wines from that region. It is a blend of Grenache, Syrah, and Mourvedre and of course (just my luck) it can’t be found in Western Michigan. Should pair perfectly with roast beast, wild game, or a night spent scanning the Lake Michigan horizon for cigar-shaped spacecraft. If only I could find a bottle, I’m certain that I would see numerous alien spacecraft cavorting about after 4 0r 5 glasses!

Thanks for blogging with me thus far, and Cheers!