Opening the Channels and Speeding the Game: A Short History of Transactional Forms

Citators, digests, annotated codes. These standard legal research tools, developed by generations of lawyers and now adapted for the online era, tend to be the province of litigators. Transactional lawyers may also occasionally use these tools, but for the practitioner making and documenting commercial, corporate, real estate, or securities deals, legal forms are often a more useful tool. Used judiciously, these sample documents make drafting more efficient, guide junior business lawyers through unfamiliar transactions, and help identify legal issues to be researched. For today’s dealmakers, online transactional forms are essential research and drafting tools in their own right, but examining the print origins of these digital resources is also instructive. As we will see, the proliferation and increasing specialization of transactional forms sources reflect broader themes in legal publishing and in the development of the American legal profession. Historical forms sources are also an entertaining read, revealing the preoccupations of their times (many of which still resonate today) and vividly capturing the peculiar and sometimes funny voices of their authors.