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Falconbury

Legal Writing and Drafting Skills for Commercial and Contracts Managers In-house Training

This course will empower commercial and contracts managers to navigate legal writing and contract drafting complexities with knowledge and confidence.

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Format: Live online
CPD: 6 hours for your records
Certificate of completion

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Course overview

Commercial and contracts managers don't usually need to write contracts from scratch, but they do have to draft new clauses, amend, or update contracts, and write legal letters. A good understanding and grasp of clear legal writing and drafting skills is essential to fulfil this element of the role.

Under the careful guidance of the expert trainer, this course will ensure you gain a comprehensive understanding of the common pitfalls to be aware of. This intensive day will make sure you’re up to date with the key areas of risk and have a full understanding of the latest drafting techniques and writing skills in clear English.

This course is also relevant for business owners and managers - well-written contracts are essential for protecting your company's interests. Business managers have valuable experience and knowledge to contribute to contracts and this can help make legal documents more precise, better-written and more effective for a company's goals.

This is a highly practical course including many exercises to help embed the learning. There will also be time during the course to ask your questions and get clarity on contract drafting and legal writing technicalities. By attending this course and enhancing your skills and knowledge you will ensure you protect your organisation against unnecessary risk and be successful in your role.

This course is part of our Commercial Management training courses series which aims to help individuals gain confidence in a range of areas surrounding contract law, and broader business management knowledge.

Benefits of attending

By attending this highly practical course you will:

Learn how to recognise drafting inaccuracies and effectively re-draft poorly written clauses
Draft effective standard clauses that can be used across the organisation to manage exposure to legal risk
Understand the principles of using plain English within your contracts to reduce uncertainty
Discover how to avoid over-complex sentences and structures to limit the risk of dispute
Develop more effective legal writing skills that can be used in all your legal and business communications

Who should attend?

This course has been specifically designed for Commercial and Contract Managers who need to draft, amend or update contracts and write legal letters but don’t have a legal background.

The content is also relevant for business owners and managers who want to understand how to protect their businesses through well-written contracts and legal correspondence.

This course will cover:

Guidelines to writing/drafting contracts in clear English

How to structure clauses
Using the language of obligation and discretion accurately: shall, may and must
Avoiding old-fashioned language
Effective use of provisos and exceptions (e.g. ‘provided that’ and ‘notwithstanding’)
Avoiding ambiguity

PRACTICAL EXERCISE: Redrafting clauses in clear English

During this practical session, participants will apply the principles above to redrafting a range of clauses from international commercial agreements. Both individual and group work exercises will be undertaken with results reviewed in a group forum and constructive feedback and guidance supplied by the expert trainer.

Legal correspondence: writing emails and letters with precision and clarity

Different types of written communication and their appropriate use
Examples of standard opening and closing
Differences between semi-formal and informal register
Structuring a letter of advice
Differences between British and American English

PRACTICAL EXERCISE: Drafting emails with precision and clarity

The participants will apply the principles above by redrafting a badly written piece of legal correspondence under the guidance of the expert trainer.

Advanced contract drafting practical exercise

With guidance from the expert trainer, participants will be working in small teams to draft a number of clauses from scratch based on written instructions taken from a case study agreement and a commercial lease.

Legal vocabulary

There will be a series of exercises to develop the knowledge of the participants of legal vocabulary.

Alan Simmons
Consultant

Alan Simmons LLB (Hons) in Law with French , LLM in International Human Rights Law, RSA CETEFLA. Alan is a highly experienced trainer of legal English who has been working with international lawyers across the globe for nearly 30 years. He shares his expertise by delivering legal and business skills and language training to lawyers, other professionals and businesspeople to enhance their skills at drafting concise and watertight contract clauses in the English language.

He qualified as a solicitor in England having studied law in the UK, Strasbourg and the European University Institute in Florence and then went on to train as a solicitor in an international law firm. He spent some years practising commercial law in law firms in London in the areas of corporate law, construction law, employment law, intellectual property, advertising and media law.

He is fluent in French and Portuguese and has good written and spoken Spanish, Italian and Albanian. He has completed legal translations from French, Spanish and Portuguese and he also has conversational German, Japanese, Croatian, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian and Romanian. His passion for different writing systems in languages means he has learnt to read and write Hindi, Persian, Japanese and Arabic.

He has used his skills and experience to successfully train legal staff from junior counsel to judges in all elements of international commercial law across the world. Alan is a dynamic trainer and applies a highly interactive style to ensure complete understanding and an enjoyable learning experience.

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