Invert, always, invert
I have an &quot;Invert&quot;-related question for the HN hive mind — see below for the question, and why it&#x27;s not off-topic: I&#x27;m a pretty-senior lawyer and part-time law professor; I&#x27;m working on turning some of my accumulated contract clauses and course materials into a &quot;fair and balanced,&quot; annotated, contract <i>framework</i>, in the form of a plain HTML document w&#x2F; some CSS styling, to support using shorter contracts in business.<p>EXAMPLE: Instead of doing a full-blown NDA, parties could agree, in an email exchange, that Party A will keep Party B&#x27;s confidential information secret in accordance with the [name] Confidential Information Clause — presto, an enforceable NDA (in most jurisdictions).<p>I&#x27;ll be posting the whole thing online for free under some kind of Creative Commons license, in part for my students, and in part in the hope that if people start to use it, <i>eventually</i> I won&#x27;t have to spend so much time reviewing random contract language for clients.<p>The current corpus includes clauses for confidentiality; consulting services; software warranties and disclaimers; limitations of liability; terms of service; payment terms; referral payments; channel partnerships; consulting services; indemnity ground rules; and other things.<p>I&#x27;m trying to follow (part of) the Unix philosophy: Each clause should do basically one thing, and do it well, with as few dependencies as possible (maximize orthogonality).<p>The materials also have numerous planning checklists for spotting issues that can come up.<p>The clauses incorporate typical wish-list items that work for both sides. In a prior life, I was the general counsel for a software company, and customers&#x27; lawyers liked that balanced approach very much because it reduced their workload; our sales people likewise liked the fact that the balanced approach helped get us to signature sooner, without screwing around with anatomy-measuring, &quot;art of the deal&quot; game playing.<p>The clauses are extensively annotated with citations to real-world cases where problems arose — sometimes, big problems — explaining how the clause language seeks to avoid the problems, again in ways that work for both parties.<p>For improved readability, I&#x27;m using Python-like indentation to avoid long, wall-of-words paragraphs of dense legalese. (That&#x27;s proving very popular with my clients&#x27; business people.)<p>HERE&#x27;S THE QUESTION: Apropos of the &quot;Invert&quot; subject of the posted article, should this contract framework be positioned as:<p>1. a vitamin — &quot;balanced, readable terms to help you get workable contracts to signature sooner,&quot;<p>or<p>2. aspirin - &quot;learn from others&#x27; failures by adopting the [name] framework in your contracts.&quot;<p>All input gratefully received.