If you must include all of the natural language prose in a legal document, or if it can be abstracted out Most legal documents I've seen are multiple pages of large blocks of text, with just a few fill-in-the-blanks here and there, and a signature at the end. If all of the text that is shared between contracts is black, and what is unique/custom-filled-in per document is underlined/white, it might look like this: ████____________███████████████████████████████████ ███████████████____________████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ That is to say, all that we really need in our document is this: ████____________███████████████████████████████████ ███████████████____________████████████████████████ Followed by an attachment to the rest of the document: ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ ███████████████████████████████████████████████████ Or really, what I'm going toward, is the following question. Say I have a library of common contracts at my office. In there I have a general independent contract agreement which I've archived/categorized in my office library as Independent Contractor Agreement #123, without any fill-in-the-blanks. Now, when I hire an independent contractor, all I give them is a document that looks pretty much like this (ignore the actual language, I am new to legal documents). I ___Foo___ will engage in project __Bar__ with company __Baz__ on date __Date__ according to contract Independent Contractor Agreement #123 in the library of __Baz__ which I have read and understand and agree to. __Foo__ That is, you don't even have to give them a copy of the contract. In the same way you might reference some legal code without actually copying the legal code directly into the contract. Instead you would do along the lines of this writing: According to 31 U.S. Code § 5330, we will ... Rather than According to 31 U.S. Code § 5330, which says: Registration With Secretary of the Treasury Required.— In general.—Any person who owns or controls a money transmitting business shall register the business (whether or not the business is licensed as a money transmitting business in any State) with the Secretary of the Treasury not later than the end of the 180-day period beginning on the later of— the date of enactment of the Money Laundering Suppression Act of 1994; or the date on which the business is established. [100's more lines...] we will ... I'm wondering if you can do this same sort of thing. Only have the contract be a few lines, with the bulk of it stored in some external library somewhere for reference. Or if there is some law/thing that states that you are required to include all the prose of the contract in the document the person who signs it takes home. If nothing else, this would save on a lot of paper and ink. One reason I can think of why this might not be acceptable is because perhaps the person maintaining the contract at their own library could change it after the fact. So that's probably why you'd want to always give them a copy (snapshot) of the prose as it stood at time of signing. But then again, maybe not, you could change the copy after the fact with regular contracts too in the same way, so perhaps it would still be possible then. Hmm...
That is, you don't even have to give them a copy of the contract. In the same way you might reference some legal code without actually copying the legal code directly into the contract. If you do not communicate material terms of the contract to your contractor, the contract will be unenforceable due to lack of meeting of minds. Referencing "some legal code", provided that that code is publicly available is fine: your contractor can look it up and decide if they are happy with it. But doing the same with "Independent Contractor Agreement #123" will only work if you provide a copy of it to your contractor. For example, it can be attached to the paper being signed as a Schedule. So, in a nut shell, abstracting prose out is fine as long as it is communicated/attached.
The fact that you're not a native speaker of English doesn't alter the legal situation. If you literally had no understanding of English but for some reason you signed a piece of paper, then you might argue that there was no agreement in the first place, but obviously you do speak some English. Most people don't actually understand what contracts mean (on both sides). Contracts are still enforced, based on what the contract says. The move-in data is proposed, not firm, and it even indicates what the charges are if your circumstances change and the dates have to change (whereas is their circumstances change, they wouldn't have a basis for charging extra). It also does say that there will be no refund if you change your mind. So the piece of paper says "No refund". The problem seems to be that there's an "agent" whose statements you relied on, who is ultimately responsible for this problem, and s/he implied that you could get a refund. It's not clear what kind of "agent" this is (is he working for you, or for the owners?). You'd have a somewhat different legal basis depending on which it is, but you could sue someone in either event, assuming that you could actually persuade the court that you were given false information which you relied on. The statement "they will refund your money if the guy doesn't move out by the 16th" is false; the statement "they may refund your money if the guy doesn't move out by the 16th" is true. If the latter was the statement that you relied on, then you knew (or should have known) that that isn't a promise, it's just a guess, and if you read the piece of paper you know that it's a promise with no basis. So I would say it comes down to establishing what promise was made to you. Arguing that the agent "made" you sign isn't going to get you anywhere (unless you can prove actual coersion).
There are three answers here. First, as is common on this site, you are using the term, "legal" and "illegal." Those are not legally meaningfully terms. A good lawyer won't use those terms to mean allowed or disallowed. We talk in terms of potential civil or criminal liability, or other sanctions and consequences. To say that something is "legal" does not communicate much. Second, all contracts are governed by a duty of good faith. That means that you cannot try to "trick" someone with the terms of the contract and expect to enforce that contract against them and you cannot try to skirt your obligations by finding a tricky form of compliance not within the mutual understanding of the agreement. As with all things, defining good faith is not easy, and depends on the specific context of a situation. It is worth distinguishing between the duty of good faith, and the duties one owes to a fiduciary; good faith is surely far less, but nevertheless still meaningful. Third, a defense to non-performance of a contract is that the agreement as written is unconscionable. A contract that is a grossly unfair deal where the contract was not actively negotiated (i.e. Blindly signing a bad form contract), may fall under this category. Note: I am not your lawyer; this is not legal advice; contact a licensed attorney in your area; do not rely on my statements; I merely am providing a general answer that is academic in nature.
Terms and clauses are the apples and oranges of a contract. First of all — from a conceptual point of view, does a contract contain anything other than terms, name of the signing parties and clauses? — most contracts do not even need to be in writing (and thus do not need to contain any "signing parties" or "clauses"). What makes up a contract is a separate question but, again, a writing is only necessary for certain types of contracts (e.g. real estate contracts). Terms of a contract exist regardless of whether it is in writing or not: they are plainly specific information (or knowledge) about the contract that the parties have agreed on: who the parties are, what they do for each other and what they get in return, times, places, numbers and whatever the parties consider essential to the contract. This information/knowledge may just stay in the minds of the parties and never be rendered in a readable form. The contract will be perfectly valid and enforceable. Clauses are what written contracts composed of. They are just blocks of text each addressing specific aspect or concern of the contract e.g. Parties, Payment, Delivery, Force majeure, Termination, Jurisdiction etc.
Yes Yes Yes However, these are pretty standard contract terms. Many, many terms survive the end of the substantive agreement. For example, terms with respect to ongoing confidentiality, dispute resolution, warranties, termination itself etc. The second is so common it actually has a named legal doctrine: reading down. In the absence of such a clause, if the contract inadvertently exceeds what the law allows, it preserves the contract rather than leaving both parties without contractural protection.
Written down computer code is subject to copyright. If you do not have the permission of the owner to copy it you are breaching their copyright unless your use constitutes fair use/dealing.
There is no generalisation. The "articles" are articles of clerkship. The context permits the implication of that specific usage, in the same way that talking about "cars" at a racetrack isn't a generalisation of the word "car" - it's an implication of specifically racecars. Ancestry.co.uk explains well what the articles actually are. Briefly, they are simply fixed-term apprenticeship contracts between an established practicing lawyer and a student who wishes to become a lawyer.
First of all, a contract is valid without a signature and even without being in writing; all that is needed is consent by the parties. Therefore, the signature is merely evidence of that consent and is only relevant if a dispute arises over the general consent or the particular terms that were consented to. A digital signature would make it harder for Bob to argue that those were not the terms he signed but if I have Bob's signature on them then the onus of proving he didn't sign rests with Bob, I don't have to prove he did. All of the methods you suggest are valid as would an email saying "Got the contract. I agree. Bob."