For trainees and junior lawyers · English law

Drafting Skills

A bakery hires a garage to service and repair its delivery vans. You draft the contract for the bakery.

How to draft a contract, taught through one agreement from the term sheet to signing.

Polgarrow's van yard behind the bakery, drawn from straight above like a site plan. Along the top, a kerb and a verge with three trees. Two rows of delivery vans stand in painted bays, backed up to the yard's middle lane, and run out of the picture on both sides; the near row runs off the bottom. Every van is the same: a long high roof with ribs and a square roof vent. One bay in the far row holds a different van, shorter and plainer, with a smooth white roof and nothing on it: the replacement van Kestrow lends while one of the bakery's own vans is in its workshop. The outline of that roof is drawn in copper. Its back doors stand open, and on the lane behind it waits a trolley stacked with bread trays, the top tray full of loaves: the bread goes out in whichever van is there. No one is in the picture.

You will be able to:

  • Turn a term sheet into a clear first draft
  • Write duties, deadlines and definitions that mean one thing
  • Answer a mark-up and get a contract signed

10 chapters with tests · a final exam · a certificate · about 3 hours in all · published 20 October 2026

Start Chapter 1

Chapters

Module 1

The First Draft

Module 2

Words That Mean One Thing

Module 3

Promises and Deadlines

Module 4

Finishing the Contract

One case runs through every chapter: a bakery hires a garage to keep its delivery vans on the road. Read the full Drafting File →

Glossary: every term in plain English · Final exam: 30 questions, open book