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Modularity In Contracts: Boilerplate And Information Flow, Henry E. Smith
Modularity In Contracts: Boilerplate And Information Flow, Henry E. Smith
Michigan Law Review
Contractual boilerplate is a little like property. Such a statement might seem like a category mistake. After all, contractual boilerplate language is part of contracts, which, unlike property, are freely customizable by the parties. Contracts create rights between those parties, not against the world at large. Nor do people who devise new boilerplate terms usually have intellectual property in the provisions themselves. I will argue that, in an interesting and overlooked way, boilerplate is the first way station on the road from contract to property. In particular, boilerplate, like all legal communication, is the result of striking a trade-off between …
The Strategy Of Boilerplate, Robert B. Ahdieh
The Strategy Of Boilerplate, Robert B. Ahdieh
Michigan Law Review
That boilerplate is pervasive is hardly surprising. In a variety of ways, standardized terms in day-to-day contracts serve an essential cost-saving function. By this measure, one might expect less frequent reliance on boilerplate in high-value contracts among sophisticated parties. Yet standard terms would appear to be no less widespread in contracts among the sophisticated. Notwithstanding their representation by able counsel, charged to craft comprehensive and detailed, but also particularized, contracts, such parties will commonly conclude agreements comprised heavily of traditional terms--contracting norms of a sort-rather than terms tailored to the distinct features of their particular bargain. Examples of seemingly suboptimal …