ACL1024 | Advanced Contract Law & Contract Law and its Application

This course is in the nature of an elective course. It develops on two prior courses, Contracts – I and Contracts – II. The purpose of this course is to take the students into the depth of certain aspects of contract law and its application, including judgments and thereby understand the real life application of the provisions of the Contracts Act, 1872. The course intent is also to help them understand why certain provisions in certain specific agreements are drafted in a particular way, which would strengthen their general contract drafting skills. Because of the practical application of contract law which is intended to be covered through this course, contract law teachers are also welcome to attend any of the classes that they may consider useful.

The approach of the course would be to break up the classes into twenty two hour sessions, which will take select aspects of the Contract Act and provide the students with a live interplay of these provisions, by assessing it with judgments, hypothetical and real scenarios, so that a more comprehensive understanding of the contract law is provided to the students. The initial sessions will work on strengthening the fundamentals of contract law. It is expected that this would be the first four sessions. Thereafter the balance sixteen sessions would take the students through certain select aspects of contract law, which would enable them to strengthen and use their contract skills for the rest of their careers. There would be two primary commentaries that are recommended for student reading and preparation, namely pollock and mulla on law of contract and specific relief and V. G.. Ramachandran on Contract Law. Each student is expected to have a bare act of the Contract Act, the Specific Relief Act, the Securities Contracts Regulation Act, the Powers of Attorney Act, the Depository Act, the NSDL Regulations on Pledge,  the Insolvency and the Bankruptcy Code and the Competition Act. The application of the provisions would be illustrated through clauses of actual contracts, as well as through problems and real-life situations and cases which are either actually pending or hypothetical cases which actually arise on a daily basis. In this process the method and skills which are used for actually negotiating will also be discussed, so that the right fundamentals are built for the students.

The method of teaching would be through interactive workshops based on notes that are provided to the students at the beginning of each class. The notes would deal with the topics for the day and would deal with the law as well as practical situations.