lawyer Archives - The Five Things Checklist

14 January 202114 January 2021Career

5 reasons why a lawyer makes a very good journalist (Offbeat Career series)

I have decided to start a new series on my website – Offbeat Careers – to bring to you information about what alternate, exciting and fulfilling career you can choose post your law degree. This past year 2020 has seen many of us, especially those graduating from law school in 2020 and 2021, grappling with uncertainty on recruitment front. The pandemic and the resultant lockdown has seriously affected global economy, leading to employers freezing new hires and trimming their existing workforce. More and more of us are in the already competitive job market. I would like all the law students […]

21 September 202018 February 2021Contract

5 things you need to know about Definitions & Interpretations clause of a contract

After a hiatus, I am back with an article on contract drafting, this time on the topic of the definitions and interpretations clause. Definitions are a ubiquitous part of a contract. Sometimes they appear right at the beginning of the contract just after the introductory clauses. Sometimes they are spread across the contract. If you are a law student and have done internships at corporate law firms, you might have received a thick contract and asked to review it for consistency and cross referencing. One of your jobs would have been to see that all the definitions are capitalized and […]

27 August 202013 December 2020Career

5 tips to ace legal writing skills (+ free video)

Legal writing skill is the most important tool of the trade for a lawyer or a law student. The ability to write well allows you to communicate your message clearly and effectively. It bridges the gap between what’s on your mind and what you communicate. Therefore, it’s extremely important to master legal writing while you are a law student and continue honing it when you join the profession. Let’s look at what all lawyers need to write and why this skill is important for them. Types of legal writing Regularly, disputes lawyers or in-house counsel need to draft legal pleadings […]

14 July 202013 December 2020Contract

5 things on the introductory clauses of a contract

Many times, we do not focus as much on the introductory clauses of a contract as we should. We think nothing major can happen in these introductory clauses. I am talking of the clauses that precede the core contract terms ie. till the recital. This makes up what is called the “Front of the Contract”. You might say, why, they are only the title, date, place and parties. Surely, one doesn’t goof up here. While reviewing contracts, I have found many errors, some of them grave, in the few introductory clauses that are present in a contract. Some mistakes, as […]

21 May 202013 December 2020Career

5 skills of a successful lawyer and how to hone them

We all want to be successful lawyers and work hard towards it. But we may not be aware of the skills required to be a successful lawyer. Even if we are aware, we may not know how to inculcate those skills. This post is an attempt to bring to you easy, practical and doable steps to hone the skills required to be a successful lawyer, or for that matter, any professional. Of course, we all define success in different ways. Are you considered a successful lawyer if you have a job at one of the top tier law firms?Or if […]

13 May 202013 December 2020Contract

5 things to consider while drafting a Force Majeure clause

Before I delved right into the how’s of the many clauses of a contract, I thought of starting with the one which is on everybody’s mind these days – Force Majeure. Force Majeure, which is usually a boilerplate clause inserted without much thought as to its language and import, has emerged as the pivot on which all the contracts are standing today during the unprecedented outbreak of Covid-19. The havoc it has wreaked through a medley of death, lock down and curfew has put tremendous pressure on performance of contracts worldwide. From the looks of it, we are at the precipice […]

10 May 202013 December 2020Contract

5 components of a Contract Style Guide

In our earlier articles, we have seen 5 points to note before drafting a contract and 5 signs of a well-drafted contract, Continuing therefrom, in today’s article I discuss components of a contract style guide. If you have worked in a law firm, you would have noticed how all documents that are generated there, follow a certain look and feel. The typeface and point size is standard – usually Calibri 11 or Times New Roman 12. So are line spacing, clause arrangement, margin and para justification. Even the language follows a certain flow and structure. This is called a style […]

3 May 202013 December 2020Litigation

5 ways to handle voluminous legal files

I thought of taking a short detour from my series on Contract Drafting and write a post on how to handle voluminous legal files, especially by a litigation lawyer. As a lawyer, you will have no choice but to befriend piles and piles of paper, whether you work on transactions or litigation. You will have to learn how to organise them, file them, have them handy and be able to find out information out of them when needed urgently. As an intern in the Capital Markets team in L&L Partners (then known as Luthra and Luthra), I used to be […]

1 May 202013 December 2020Contract

5 points to note before drafting a contract

Whenever you are given a task to draft a contract, ditch the standard templates available the first time. Create one yourself and compare it with the available template to see how you fared. Yes, it’s extra work, but if you don’t do this exercise right at the beginning, chances are that you never will. Once you work on a standard template, you will be predisposed towards that language. You will end up using the same flowery and long sentences full of legal jargon, without ever thinking the ‘why’ behind it. You will always believe that this is how a contract […]

26 April 202012 December 2020Contract

5 reasons to learn how to draft a contract

Learning how to draft a contract is a most essential skill that a lawyer should have in his briefcase. Whether you are an in-house counsel or an associate in a law firm, chances are that contracts form a major part of your work profile. In some of the work profiles, all you will end up doing is drafting, vetting, negotiating and executing contracts day in and day out. ‘Contract Specialist’ is a real job title in many in-house departments. They are the super experts of contracts for their companies and they manage the entire contract lifecycle for their companies. Do […]