G. Drafting Agreements And Court Documents

• Author: Ted Tjaden
• Profession: National Director of Knowledge Management McMillan LLP
• Pages: 349-352

Contenidos

• 1) Agreements.
• 2) Pleadings.

Page 349

Agreements and pleadings are the final major category of legal writing to be discussed in this book. Agreements fall within the realm of traditional solicitor’s work - drafting contracts, wills, and corporate documents. Pleadings fall within the realm of traditional barrister’s work - drafting court documents, such as pleadings and affidavits, on behalf of a client. Resources on drafting agreements and pleadings are listed in Section I, below in this chapter.

1) Agreements

Lawyers very rarely draft agreements from scratch. We are heavily dependent on forms and precedents available from various commercial publications and on precedents compiled by individual lawyers and law firms and kept internally by the firm. Precedents can be particularly useful for "boilerplate" provisions, which are those standard provisions found at the end of agreements. Boilerplate provisions often include

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such topics as governing law, resolution of disputes by arbitration, provisions for modifying the agreement, "entire agreement" provisions, warranty provisions, provisions for Acts of God ("force majeure" clauses), time being of the essence, and restrictions on assignment of the agreement. Although boilerplate provisions are not ordinarily required by law, prudence warrants their inclusion in most agreements since these provisions usually anticipate what might otherwise be unforeseen events. As with reliance on any precedent, care must be taken not to slavishly copy the language from the precedent without first adapting it, where necessary, to suit the needs of the client entering into the agreement. There are two major "forms and precedents" sets in Canada - one offered by LEXISNEXIS Canada (Canadian Forms and Precedents) and the other offered by Canada Law Book (O’Brien’s Encyclopedia of Forms).

There are currently a number of titles or topics in the LEXISNEXIS Canada Canadian Forms & Precedents series (red and blue binders in print, also available on CD-ROM and by subscription on LEXISNEXIS Quicklaw):

· Banking & Finance

· British Columbia Court Forms

· Commercial Tenancies

· Corporations

· Debtor/Creditor⁶

· Employment

· Information, Technology & Entertainment

· Land Development

· Licensing

· Sale & Operation of a Business

· Sale, Distribution & Transportation of Goods

· Wills & Estates

Canada Law Book has a large, multi-volume series called O’Brien’s Encyclopedia of Forms (burgundy binders in...