WebCredenza 2025 Contract crafting: Navigating ethical issues in drafting audio replay

Negotiating, drafting and reviewing contracts are processes fraught with ethical issues.  Negotiations sometimes require zealous advocacy, taking maximal positions; other times, they require delicacy and balance. Reviewing and drafting complex contracts is a similar ethical minefield. If you discover that the draft of a contract contains materially incorrect assumptions about the law but which will benefit your client, do you have the duty to disclose or correct the error?  In the same way, if the contract contains faulty assumptions about material facts, must you disclose those faulty assumptions?  And how do these rules apply when drafting a contract?  This program will provide you with a real world guide to the ethics of negotiating, drafting and reviewing contracts.

• The law – when you know a counterparty has made faulty assumptions benefiting your client, must you say?
• The facts – when a counterparty makes faulty factual assumptions, must you correct?
• Ethics and rescission – are you ever ethically obligated to rescind or restate a contract?
• Ethics in negotiations – what’s the line between zealous representation and deception? 

This program may be offered on multiple dates. You may only claim MCLE credit for one showing. 

Opinions and positions stated by presenters of MoBarCLE programs are those of the presenters and not necessarily those of The Missouri Bar. This program is intended as information for lawyers in Missouri, in conjunction with other research they deem necessary, in the exercise of their independent judgment.