We have just completed another successful seminar workshop (Introduction to Working with Contracts) at the Hotel Victoria in the medieval city in Nuernberg. As always, it was a meeting for both lawyers and non-lawyers. Participants came from various parts of Europe but they all had in common a desire to improve how they draft, develop, negotiate and understand contracts from different legal systems. Our sessions involved identifying the pitfalls in both language and law. In particular, we dealt with cross-system business agreements. In the end we covered everything from drafting matters to issues of liability and the fifty shades of contract interpretation. I hope the contract overview will prove useful to the participants and they will take back lots of practical ideas for their work. Thank you for attending! My gratitude also goes out again to the wonderful team at Hotel Victoria: as always, great location, great hospitality and marvellous support! Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you at the next seminar! January, 2015 Stuart Bugg, Nuremberg P.S. Anybody interested in coming to Nuernberg to attend one of the seminars should check the programme for this year here in Facebook or in my blog (Bugg’s Lawspeak) or go to the Augustin & Bugg website at www.augustinbugg.com. Please note that places are limited to a maximum of ca. 16 at each seminar. So, please be sure to book...

Times change: we know that. What we tend to forget is that language changes, too. When I was being prompted by a menu on the Law Society website  (sorry, it is now is operated by the Solicitor’s Regulatory Authority ) to download and print out a hard copy of my new pdf-format practising certificate a few months ago, I had the chance to compare my rather pinkish print-out with the far more impressive printed version of the certificate the Law Society used to send out by post. I also thought about how the language has changed. Many of the words and phrases we use today in our daily work are either new or hijacked from other contexts. The office worker of the 1980’s would have major language problems today. When the green cathode tube monitor (not a television) first took over my desk along with a (non-musical) keyboard (and, much later, the amusing mouse) I had my first encounters with the desktop computer (and later the laptop). Of course, I now have a flatscreen monitor on my Apple and use a Blackberry, ipad or some other mobile device when travelling.Way back in the early days I used to receive most of my contract work with snail mail letters and usually had a bit of time to type in amendments and send a reply by post or make suggestions at a (face-to-face “real time“) meeting with the client. Today my work usually arrives by email attachment. Of course, I often have to send copies of my messages to interested parties as blind copies. I have even had to respond to items posted on social media on rare occasions. In  the New Zealand law firm I first worked in in the 1980’s we still had tea ladies appearing in front of the office door at 10:30 in the morning to serve hot tea and biscuits. On special days we were even supplied with chocolate biscuits. There were no coffee machines. Just tea ladies and tea breaks. Apart from telephone conversations, all discussions took place on a face-to-face basis. There were no Skype confrontations, no video conferences and, of course,  text messages (“SMS”), email and Facebook et al were all dreams from Star Trek and sci-fi writers. “Google” meant to stare at somebody and the internet was still being dreamt of in the minds of scientists. We had libraries and books instead. Telexes and telegrams were still used and the facsimile machine (fax) was a mysterious black-box device kept in a special room and used only by partners for special matters of great urgency. Telephones were very large, sitting on desks and connected by wires. Information was all in “hard copy” form and the clouds were only in the sky. Hardware had nothing to...

Places (participants limited to 14 per seminar) are still available in the following seminars: 1. Update 2014: Masterclass on Developments in English Contract Law 5-6 December 2014 Hotel Victoria Nürnberg 2. Introduction to Working with Contracts 23-24 January 2015 Hotel Victoria Nürnberg 3. Sales and Distribution Contracts in English 6-7 February 2015 Hotel Victoria Nürnberg 4. Contract Management and Boilerplate Clauses 17-18 April 2015 Hotel Victoria Nürnberg 5. German Contracts in English 17-18 July 2015 Hotel Victoria Nürnberg 6. Introduction to Common Law and Legal English 11-12 September 2015 Hotel Victoria Nürnberg 7. Masterclass: Contract Law Update 2015 4-5 December 2015 Hotel Victoria Nürnberg REGISTRATION FORMS etc.: augustinbugg.com/en/we-do/seminars/ For further information on the above seminars and workshops please contact us by telephone +49 (0) 911 945 8867 or by email seminar@augustinbugg.com or see our homepage at augustinbugg.com/en/we-do/seminars/ for further details and seminar...

Question: What are “cross-system” contracts? Are they the same as “cross-border” contracts ? Answer: Yes and no! Some contracts may fall into both categories as the definitions (sometimes) overlap to describe the same document: Cross-system contracts are legally-binding agreements (usually in writing or electronic form) that use one legal system for the applicable law (e.g. German Law) but which are written or developed in another language than the official language(s) used for that choice of law e.g. a German Law agreement with the binding language of the contract being English. In short, we mix the choice of law and language. Such agreements are very common today. A cross-border contract usually means an agreement with an international component such as, for example, the parties coming from different countries or the performance taking place in different jurisdictions or goods being delivered across an international...

Our office will be closed from 24.12.2014 until 06.01.2015. We will be available again in the office from 07.01.2015. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! The Augustin & Bugg...