This concise paperback, which will be a valuable supplementary text to any traditional contracts casebook, combines cases and actual contracts to bring a real-world practical perspective to the first-year contracts classroom.
Contracts: A Transactional Approach fills the long-felt need by professors, students, and practitioners for a teaching approach to contracts that focuses on practical and transactional skills.
Contracts: A Transactional Approach introduces business contracts and transactions to the first-year contracts class in a unique fashion:
- Actually executed agreements between sophisticated parties give students exposure to the sort of agreements they will encounter in practice as either a litigator or a transactional attorney.
- Agreements are lightly edited and are presented as whole documents unbroken by discussion to force the student to read and analyze contracts in their entirety.
- Focus points and, where appropriate, practitioner comments before each agreement help focus the student's attention on important concepts.
- The authors begin with the simplest agreement and iteractively build on the same lessons. The discussion is tailored to basic provisions and their interaction with contract law, enabling students to build familiarity with once seemingly foreign contractual provisions and concepts.
- Lessons focus on the building block provisions (e.g., recitals, representations, warranties, indemnities, limitations of liability, restrictive covenants, liquidated damages) typically found in sophisticated contracts, including the judicial treatment of those provisions.
- Practitioner comments from experts in the field provide insight and advice on relevant topics to give a real world and practical perspective and to drive home the relevance of these concepts to students.
- This book teaches students how to read and understand contracts (and to anticipate how judges may read and understand contracts) so that the student can better draft contracts.
- Drafting tips are sprinkled throughout the book.
David Zarfes is Associate Dean of The University of Chicago Law School where, in addition to his deanship duties, he teaches courses in corporate and commercial law.
Dean Zarfes was for many years Executive Vice President and General Counsel of Paris-based Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and a member of the Firm's Management Committee. He was responsible for the management and supervision of the Cap Gemini legal departments in North, Central, and South America.
Prior to this, he practiced law with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, where he specialized in corporate, information technology, and cross-border transactions. He has an extensive background in acquisitions and joint ventures, corporate governance, and significant corporate and IT transactions. In addition to his teaching at Chicago, he has taught at Columbia University Law School.
Dean Zarfes holds advanced degrees from Chicago, Columbia, and Georgetown.
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Michael L. Bloom is a Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Law School. At the Law School, he teaches contracts, business, and transactional law classes.
Prior to joining the Law School faculty, he was a Lecturer in Law and the Executive Director of the Corporate Lab Transactional Clinic, which he co-founded, at the University of Chicago Law School. Before that, he practiced corporate and transactional law at Sidley Austin LLP in Chicago, with a focus on technology transactions and mergers and acquisitions.
Prof. Bloom earned his J.D. from Yale Law School. While at Yale, he served as a Teaching Fellow and worked to help launch a community development bank. He earned his B.A. "with Highest Distinction" from the University of Michigan, where he was a member of the Bentley Society.
