This course explores foundational transactional skills of negotiating a contract, as well as reading, drafting, and interpreting formal agreements. Students take the role of either debtor or lender’s counsel in a hypothetical transaction and negotiate and draft the documents in a complex hypothetical transaction. In a series of assignments students negotiate, draft, and edit different types of contract documents such as, promissory note, security agreement, and financing statement, and personal guaranty. Students will learn how to structure and format each type of contract, write to maximize clarity, and allocate risk between the parties as the transaction proceeds. Student-created portfolios provide a writing sample for employers that seek familiarity with a common business transaction, the contract concepts it implicates, and how to reduce agreed-upon terms to words on the page.

Pre-requesite: Commercial Law: Secured Transaction (can be taken concurrently). Students who have taken Prof. Ertman’s one credit course Commercial Law/Secured Transactions: Foundational Transactional Skills may not take this course.