Legal mark-up

Negotiation Anatomy™

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A lawyer’s stock-in-trade, her currency, the oxygen that gives her daily routine meaning and her role physical substance. For what is she if not her comments?

Ego sum id quod dico - Si quaeris causidicum loqui, locutus est tibi

If you ask a lawyer for comments, she will give you some, whether your draft needed them or not. This is a founding crux of the anal paradox. For a mark-up proves you have read an agreement, considered its content, and justified your fee. It's in her nature. It is what she does.

No text is immune from adjustment, and if your only objective is to show you've read it, slipping in a harmless “for the avoidance of doubt”, a “without limitation”, an “as the case may be” or — though on a fraught negotiation this is pushing it, be warned — an “(if any)” is a professionally satisfying but yet non-invasive way of achieving that.

No such ornamentation is calculated to improve the elegance of the text, of course. To do that you will need to disentangle some convoluted grammar — perhaps by deleting an as the case may be^[1]. This will be seen as enemy action, especially if your edits are not directed at some legal content, however spurious.

References

↑ be careful not to add the same thing n one place and delete it in another: this will be seen as hostile action.

[1] reful not to add the same thing n one place and delete it in another: this will be seen as hostile action.

[1]

Legal mark-up

References

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