Legal writing is replete with antiquated and needless words and phrases. “In witness whereof” often is one such phrase. You will see it at the end of business contracts: “In witness whereof, the parties have executed this agreement on [such and such date].”

“Witness” suggests a formal attestation or vouching of something, such as a signature or the terms of the contract. “Whereof” in this context means “of what” or “of which”. Thus, “in witness whereof” essentially means to attest to something in the document being signed.

In some cases, a formal attestation is appropriate and a government form will mandate the use of the “in witness whereof” verbiage to convey such attestation (such as in notarized documents). But in most business documents between private parties, “in witness whereof” is stuffy and meaningless. The parties do not “witness” each other’s signature or the terms of the agreement. The parties merely sign it and date it, and thereby demonstrate in writing their agreement to the terms of the contract.

A business contract should capture the essential terms of the agreement using clear, readable language. Omitting archaic and useless phrases is a good place to start.

It’s an enduring belief that between should be used in preambles of contracts with only two parties and among should be used in preambles of contracts with three or more parties. As legal usage scholar Bryan Garner quips, this is a superstition.

Between should be used when the relationship involves specific parties dealing distinctly with each other. Among should be used for general groupings that have only vague relations to one another.

As Fowler puts it (quoting the Oxford English Dictionary), between “is still the only word available to express the relation of a thing to many surrounding things severally and individually”, while among expresses a “relation to them collectively and vaguely”.

Strunk and White essentially concur.

The American Heritage Dictionary (my preferred non-legal dictionary) uses the following example: The bomb landed between the houses. It is implied that specific houses are identified and those houses define the precise boundaries within which the bomb landed. Whereas, in The bomb landed among the houses, the impact of the bomb is somewhere in the general location of a group of houses; the specific number of houses and their particular relationship to one another is not important.

Finally, again citing Garner, between expresses one-to-one relations of many things, whereas among expresses collective and undefined relations.

In a business contract, the parties are specific and the relationship between the parties is distinct – indeed foundational – to the document. Thus, I write that a contract is “between party A, party B, and party C”. The agreement is specifically between A and B, and A and C, and B and C. The contract is not just among a generalized and vague grouping of parties. It’s specific; the contract is between these exact parties and they each are agreeing with each of the other parties.

…such as: “thirty (30) days”, “five (5) directors” and “twenty-five thousand, three hundred forty-two dollars ($25,342)”?

In my view, no.

Somewhere along the line, many business lawyers are trained to write out figures in both the word form and number form. Perhaps the idea was that writing out figures in both forms ensured greater accuracy by forcing the drafter to more carefully focus on each figure. Maybe the idea was to include the word form to discourage fraud by making it harder for someone to handwrite different numbers on the document. Still another reason – perhaps the most prevalent – may be that the lawyer drafted figures like this because that’s how his or her first boss out of law school drafted documents.

Whatever the reason, most users of these documents – the business parties themselves – generally skip over the word forms and read only the numbers. The long-winded word forms take up space and are a distraction, and they create an additional area in the document to make mistakes. The risk of fraud is essentially nonexistent in many cases because multiple parties possess copies of the final documents.

There may be limited circumstances that warrant using words along with numbers, for example in handwritten checks in which the original check is given to the payee and no copy is retained. But there is little to be gained from drafting bylaws, agreements, or other business documents that are cluttered with “fifteen (15) days”, “seven and one-half percent (7.5%)”, and “forty-eight (48) hours”.

“15 days”, “7.5%”, and “48 hours” work just fine. They are easier to draft, easier to proof, and — for those who value this attribute — easier to read.