Contract Clauses and Transactional Skills

I’m happy to report that my new book, The Fundamentals of Contract Law and Clauses, is now available.  The book is intended to give students a working knowledge of contract law, meaning that they learn the meaning of contract clauses and how they are shaped and affected by doctrine.  It’s a textbook but it’s not a casebook – it’s intended to be used as a supplement in a first year contracts course or a primary text in a business school or undergraduate contracts law course.  (There’s a Teacher’s Manual which is available to instructors adopting the book which contains discussion points and exercises). 

 It always seemed a bit strange to me to teach contracts law solely by using cases – this emphasizes how to win disputes rather than how to avoid them.  This makes sense for litigators, but transactional attorneys (which I was for a decade) have a different role.  As Mark Burge has pointed out on this blog, contracts is a good gateway to transactional skills but it’s not easy to figure out how to do that seamlessly.  Hopefully, this book will be an easy way to incorporate some “transactional skills” into a first year contracts course.