Drafting International Agreements in Legal English: Pocket Guide

Any document leaving the desk of a lawyer, company officer or, for that matter, any other person may have legal consequences. This implies a tremendous range of documents. For simplicity and acknowledging the most practical use as employed by non-native speakers, the examples used in this manual focus on the contents of documents having a commercial impact, particularly those establishing a contractual relationship.

Even so, practical guidelines presented in this pocket guide, should result in all legal writing, being brief, clear and precise. That means that this product is an extremely useful tool for everyone who has to avoid dangerous legal or "painful" consequences that result from wrong wording.

For convenience, this manual is divided in three parts:-

• Document Design - an overview of principles on the appearance of documents
• Documents in Plain English - a review of English punctuation and principles of good writing in respect of both general principles and those specific of legal writing
• Documents in practice - an overview of specific provisions in respect of agreements

Finally, a specimen contract is included in the appendices to bring all of this into perspective.