Written by: Mark Anderson and Victor Warner

The second edition of Drafting and Negotiating Commercial Contracts is extremely welcome coming just over eight years since the first. In that time, substantial changes have occurred to both law and procedure. There has also been a considerable move within the legal profession from old-fashioned legal writing to plain English, a movement which Mark Anderson fully supports. Drafting and Negotiating Commercial Contracts has been thoroughly updated to consider these changes and produces a fantastic guide to drafting commercial documents.

Better lawyers are usually ones which are good at drafting and negotiating persuasive documents (whether it be a commercial document, a court document or correspondence). Commercial law, in particular, draws on these skills by allowing the artful draftsman to incorporate terms which her adversary may not appreciate. Similarly, a sound understanding of these principles allows the skilful lawyer to remove onerous terms. By reading Drafting and Negotiating Commercial Contracts the reader stands a better chance of winning this difficult war.

Drafting and Negotiating Commercial Contracts covers all of the relevant skills which a lawyer requires: formalities; structure; technique; basic skills and how to avoid, what lawyers sometimes tend to overlook, the use of legal jargon! The material is extremely well written and accessible. I passed this text to a non-lawyer who commented on how easy it was to read and understand - a factor which can sometimes be missing when a first draft arrives on your desk!

All commercial practitioners should seriously consider buying or, at the very least, reading Drafting and Negotiating Commercial Contracts. It is one of the best, if not the best, text on the principles of commercial drafting. By including a number of worked examples, the reader can incorporate these tips and techniques into their own commercial drafting which can only be good for clients and the legal profession.

Student Law Journal. January 2008.

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