A BUSKLAW Newsletter Aside: What Bilbo Baggins's Contract Teaches About Plain Language

If you're a fan of the Peter Jackson Hobbit movies, you may recall the intimidating contract that the Dwarves foisted upon poor Bilbo Baggins in the first movie (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey). That contract was full of legal jargon. So my colleague Michael Braem and I decided to write about it for the August, 2015 Michigan Bar Journal's Plain Language column. Here's the link: http://www.michbar.org/file/barjournal/article/documents/pdf4article2677.pdf.

For those of you unfamiliar with the first Hobbit movie, here's a link to a You Tube video showing the Dwarf-drafted contract - and Bilbo's reaction to it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2idYEBi51c

I'd like to thank Michael for our collaboration and Professor Joe Kimble for thinking out of the box for this Plain Language column. Also, much gratitude goes to the author and designer of the prop contract, New Zealand artist Daniel Reeve, for exchanging numerous emails with the authors about why he put together such an intimidating document and for his views on plain language in contracts that have come across his desk!

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