Legal Debt is an Analogue of Technical Debt Shortcuts in coding – not using DRY, not refactoring, not testing – are common sources of technical debt, which require additional effort, in the form of attention, thus time and money, to address. Shortcuts in the formation and operation of your startup create legal debt, which is…
Read MoreKen Adams has written a recent post describing the use of “agrees that” in a contract. One steady comment I make to agreements is getting rid of “agrees that” because it’s worse than ambiguous: it’s entirely unclear and likely to be used in distinctly different (and inconsistent) ways in the same contract. “Agrees that” becomes…
Read MoreMan, Ken Adam’s isn’t kidding when he talks about not being impressed by collections of contracts, mostly scraped from EDGAR. I saw a reference to TechAgreements, which I hadn’t heard of before, and now I know why: Here’s a selling point on their page with “Recommended Convertible Notes” (which are all clearly just scraped): “Prepared…
Read MoreThe 2nd Circuit recently issued an opinion regarding whether unpaid interns at for-profit employers are actually employees for the purpose of the FLSA and NY labor law, which would entitle them to minimum wage and overtime. The case arose out of interns who worked on the film “Black Swan” in New York. Their intern duties…
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