A Three-Step Strategy for Teaching Contract Drafting

A Study Based on US and UK Sale and Purchase Agreements

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to provide a three-step strategy for teaching contract drafting. The first step focuses on the negotiation of a business deal and on understanding the needs and objectives of the contracting parties. The second step deals with the practical process of drafting a contract, looking at contract structure and types of contract clauses. Finally, the third step describes the jurilinguistic key features, which provide a linguistic frame to the agreement.

Such a multifaceted approach enables teachers and students to picture the teaching process from a legal and jurilinguistic perspectives, as well as to consider contract drafting from the initial business deal and its negotiations to a range of details and specific text needed to be included in the written agreement.

 The set of legal documents selected for this paper is a corpus of 5 UK and US sale and purchase agreements the subjects of which represent goods and services as well as share capital.

Each step of the strategy includes a number of exercises that teachers can use with students for them to gain a better understanding of legal and linguistic aspects of contract drafting.

The students mentioned in the paper include law students from universities in Paris, France, studying legal English and legal translation courses as well as practising lawyers who have to deal with contract drafting in English.