Ertman's Developing Professional Skills: Secured Transactions

This creative and original book is designed for use in three ways. It can supplement a traditional Secured Transactions text with skills training exercises, be used as the text for a 1-credit drafting workshop added on to a doctrinal commercial law class, and also as the text for a 2 or 3 credit contract drafting course. The ten user-friendly exercises are modular so that professors can assign one or two exercises a semester to gradually make their classes comply with ABA requirements for transition to practice credits as well as formative and summative assessments. Students work in teams to negotiate and draft core documents that memorialize a secured transaction, starting with a promissory note, and continuing on to a financing statement and security agreement. In a 2 or 3-credit drafting course or workshop, students could also negotiate and draft a personal guaranty, perfect a security interest in a delivery truck and fixtures, balance ethical requirements of client confidentiality with truthfulness, and compile a portfolio of the documents with a cover letter to the client. Each exercise requires only fifteen to thirty minutes of class time and one to two hours on homework assignments that have students identify the anatomical parts of a contract (preamble, recitals, words of agreement, etc.), fill in a template promissory note with the parties’ names, principal amount, interest rate, and signature blocks, and edit a template security agreement to conform it to the terms of the students’ negotiated agreement. Each drafting exercise contains a template that students edit, and the text includes instructions for negotiation exercises.