Contracts: A Transactional Approach

This concise paperback, which will be a valuable supplementary text to any traditional contracts casebook, combines cases and actual contracts to bring a real-world practical perspective to the first-year contracts classroom. Contracts: A Transactional Approach fills the long-felt need by professors, students, and practitioners for a teaching approach to contracts that focuses on practical and transactional skills. Contracts: A Transactional Approach introduces business contracts and transactions to the first-year contracts class in a unique fashion: Actually executed agreements between sophisticated parties give students exposure to the sort of agreements they will encounter in practice as either a litigator or a transactional attorney. Agreements are lightly edited and are presented as whole documents unbroken by discussion to force the student to read and analyze contracts in their entirety. Focus points and, where appropriate, practitioner comments before each agreement help focus the student's attention on important concepts. The authors begin with the simplest agreement and iteractively build on the same lessons. The discussion is tailored to basic provisions and their interaction with contract law, enabling students to build familiarity with once seemingly foreign contractual provisions and concepts. Lessons focus on the building block provisions (e.g., recitals, representations, warranties, indemnities, limitations of liability, restrictive covenants, liquidated damages) typically found in sophisticated contracts, including the judicial treatment of those provisions. Practitioner comments from experts in the field provide insight and advice on relevant topics to give a real world and practical perspective and to drive home the relevance of these concepts to students. This book teaches students how to read and understand contracts (and to anticipate how judges may read and understand contracts) so that the student can better draft contracts. Drafting tips are sprinkled throughout the book.