What if

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Oh, the fertile, febrile mind of a transactional lawyer.

Part of the paranoid delight of transactional drafting is catering for unforeseen contingencies. To do this, the draftsperson has many tools at her disposal: force majeure clauses, indemnities, termination rights, and a propensity to draft ornate, byzantine valuation dispute clauses.

But there remains in all of these a guiding principle: one should only address contingencies now that cannot predictably be resolved later — that is to say, in the unlikely event they arise. For those contingencies, one has a simpler approach: amendment. For the certainty gained by catering for these contingencies comes at the cost of length, complexity, aggravation and, well, cost of finalising your contract.

See also

• Highly unlikely
• Force majeure
• Chicken Licken
• Indemnity
• The farmer and his sheep