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Compromising positions

11 November 2010 / Graham Reid
Issue: 7441 / Categories: Features , Regulatory
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Graham Reid provides a [crash] course in settlement drafting

The coffee’s cold, the mediator is snoring in the room next door and you’ve been negotiating for hours. At last, a compromise is reached. The pressure is on to draft a watertight agreement before “settlement remorse” sets in.
In these circumstances, there is only one thing worse than having to explain to your client that you are uncomfortable drafting an agreement on the spot, and that is confessing months later that the one you drew up is defective. This article therefore offers the anxious litigator a crash-course in settlement drafting and a guide to the traps lying in wait for the unwary.

The anatomy of a settlement

Most settlements can be reduced to six core components, along the following lines [these persons] [settle] [the claims] [arising from] [the facts] [by doing something]. The first section of this article follows this structure.

[these persons]

Identifying and naming the immediate parties to the settlement will be obvious and easy. This is however the moment to reflect on the wider

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MOVERS & SHAKERS

CBI South-East Council—Mike Wilson

CBI South-East Council—Mike Wilson

Blake Morgan managing partner appointed chair of CBI South-East Council

Birketts—Phillippa O’Neill

Birketts—Phillippa O’Neill

Commercial dispute resolution team welcomes partner in Cambridge

Charles Russell Speechlys—Matthew Griffin

Charles Russell Speechlys—Matthew Griffin

Firm strengthens international funds capability with senior hire

NEWS
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In this week's issue, Stephen Gold, NLJ columnist and former district judge, surveys another eclectic fortnight in procedure. With humour and humanity, he reminds readers that beneath the procedural dust, the law still changes lives
Generative AI isn’t the villain of the courtroom—it’s the misunderstanding of it that’s dangerous, argues Dr Alan Ma of Birmingham City University and the Birmingham Law Society in this week's NLJ
James Naylor of Naylor Solicitors dissects the government’s plan to outlaw upward-only rent review (UORR) clauses in new commercial leases under Schedule 31 of the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, in this week's NLJ. The reform, he explains, marks a seismic shift in landlord-tenant power dynamics: rents will no longer rise inexorably, and tenants gain statutory caps and procedural rights
Writing in NLJ this week, James Harrison and Jenna Coad of Penningtons Manches Cooper chart the Privy Council’s demolition of the long-standing ‘shareholder rule’ in Jardine Strategic v Oasis Investments
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