Law Commons^™

The legal academy is increasingly focused on producing practice-ready lawyers. For transactional practice, that notion requires that attorneys have the flexibility, creativity, and business acumen to draft documents that anticipate contingencies and accomplish clients’ goals. Effective lawyers are able to structure their clients’ affairs to provide a balance of flexibility for, and protection against, the predictably unexpected. To further this goal, this article incorporates pedagogical theory to introduce a classroom exercise that focuses on creativity and contingency planning in the transactional drafting context. It does so by introducing that process in a nonlegal context, specifically by having students plan a …

Intentionally or not, every state’s law regarding lien priority and post-foreclosure liability allocates risk between mortgage lenders and privately governed “common interest communities” (CICs), such as condominiums. When lenders secure their interests with mortgages on property within a CIC, the mortgages may compete against the CIC’s interests for primacy in the lien hierarchy. Modern state regimes typically delineate the respective rights of mortgagees and CIC associations according to lien-priority statutes. Older condominium-enabling statutes, however, do not address CIC lien priority directly and speak only to continuing joint and several liability for subsequent purchasers. These older and more ambiguous statutes do …