Welcome to the worlds of massive fee pressure and commoditisation…

I dunno i have provided drafting in the past and got a pissypants email back reminding me that x were holding the pen as drafting counsel and my wording was not "aligned" with their style. 

"Anywat, it's really not to actually draft your requested amendments, isn't it?"

Crikey. I actually don't know what I thought I was saying here...  And it's not even that late!  I think I need a drink.

G'wan - I hope you told them to get over themselves, and to please stop being such pompous arseholes.

Lawyers on calls

“You draft it”

“No you draft it”

“You touched it last”

…

Less talk, more chalk.

We do this when getting near the cost estimate

this never computes 4 me

getting 2 draft is almost always way better

For the avoidance of doubt, provided that, to the extent that. It’s riveting stuff.

To be fair  G’wan it does irritate me when people draft amendments and don’t even bother to use the same numbering or definitions.

Often they’ve just cut and pasted the clause they think they want directly from another agreement without refining it to fit. 

Especially annoying … is when in doing so they have imported new formatting and numbering styles that proceed to corrupt the document … 

Basically the whole of the tier of law firms below (in price terms at least) the top US firms/Magic circle have build their business models around doing this as far as I can see. They will not draft fecking anything ever. God knows how documents actually get produced when both sides instruct that type of firm. 

God knows how documents actually get produced when both sides instruct that type of firm

A fair few heath robinson / Frankenstein contracts come across my desk like a patchwork quilt held together with blu tak and string 

Governing law clause is always something wild

this tedious game is one of the many reasons I’m very grateful to no longer be a city law drone

All that money to go thru law school, hassle to get placements, get a TC, etc etc etc and then just to do crap work. Well done society eh.

What Catters said about commoditisation and extreme reluctance to incur (irrecoverable) time costs by all but the elite firms

What this means in practice is that very few people actually know how to draft

When I was a trainee 20 years ago, the price of certain products/services was over 100% higher than it is now. If you factor in inflation, pricing power has really been eroded

In those days, partners did a lot of the heavy lifting themselves. It worked from an economic perspective (see para above) and it was necessary because on the other side a partner would be scrutinising what you had done

These days a lot of the work is done by much more junior lawyers who haven't been trained properly (in big firms, including good, elite ones, it is totally possible to do four seats and then a couple of years PQE without encountering a really good technical lawyer) and who oftentimes therefore don't know what they're doing

It is true what you say about how the elite firms have bigger budgets (and can therefore draw in more resources and do stuff to a higher standard), but in my experience ironically these guys (and I was one of them) obsess too much about what is and what isn't 'market' and rely too heavily on precedent. So even there, we are in cookie cutter land, albeit with better quality dough and cookie cutter instruments 

I'm glad I'm out. The money is better, but everything else about the profession is worse now than it was 2-3 decades ago, IMO

Glad I could out of commercial property and could never go in house for a big retailer as all they would ever do was have a quick look at the lease you'd drafted then send a whole document of their standard requirements and expect you to just fully delete what you'd drafted and replace it with what they liked that by and large said the same thing.

from the client side, the people i'm willing to write big cheques to are the lawyers who can draft really well.  you want somebody who's a big swinging d1ck and commercially capable? trust me I've got a lot of those in my office.  i need somebody who can DRAFT as well and not leave me fvcked over.

Cru, these drive me INSANE too. I send back an email saying if you'd like to add drafting (on the points you've added comments on adding drafting but have not actally done so) then pls do and send back to me and I will then review.

What I'd LIKE to say but don't is - stop being a lazy arse toad and assume that we are "mind reading" what clauses you would like to be inserted!! Funny how it's often law firms that do this - they shouldn't be getting paid if they cant be botehred to draft for their clients.

On one matter I sent the contract back 3 times and cced the commercial contact that was paying the bill pointing out that their lawyer hadnt botehred to add any drafting. The seem to overlook the fact that it's a PR exercise - my company will nev er instruct that law firm now based on that one project.

**FAOD I obviously do use spellcheck in my perfect contracts unlike on ROF where spellcheck won't pick up my typos on "bothered" ;)

It was always banking transactions where the someone held the pen and you had to input comments rather than wording.  

The sending boilerplate just gets a no from me.  Send me the specific comment with a reason or the answer is no.  I am not playing a guessing game as to why you want a particular clause. Or have a call with me to talk it through - about 99% of people dont want to do this because they dont know why they are asking for somethign / cant justify it / woudl prefer to waste their client's money pissing around crossing out words and suggesting different words that mean the same thing. 

Exactly that Parsnip. Had a call recently where the useless lawyer's client agreed with me but his lawyer kept making the same point over and over agian, which we wouldn't agree to as it made no sense and they couldn't justify why it was needed - waste of an hour and a half 

Wot Canute said. 

I further observe that the punting down of work to the most junior person without proper supervision means that some extremely dodgy advice ends up being relied on by their clients. Oh dear oh dear. 

Penelope (incidentally, she is one of my favourite cartoon characters) - I was so tempted to do exactly that (send them an email asking them to actually draft something).

Instead, I harrumphed at my laptop, did the fecking drafting for them, but make sure to send it back with a few passive aggressive comments which can only be read in a Lady Bracknell "A handbag?" type voice. 

I'm sure they are feeling duly chastised.

Ha, yep I know that feeling well. Sometimes I just draft it as it's easier than asking for it especially after 4 attempts but last time I was so annoyed I sent that email.

Re name - it's MM but I thought it time for a refresh on the name! We both like wearing purple and have blonde swinging ponytails so thought I'd reference her.

what the root vegetable said - and miss pitstop about it usually overall being easier just to draft yourself….

mmmmm - blonde swinging ponytails have always done it for me!