Month: July 2022

How to Misdraft an Easement Agreement: Error Six

Last year I wrote a book on how to draft easement agreements, giving practical advice to lawyers. I had the most fun with the next-to-last chapter, which I called “Ten Ways to Misdraft Your Easement Agreement,” where I described ten ways for drafters to mess up their agreements. The sixth error I wrote about is to not set standards for roads and utilities. If you are granting an easement to allow your neighbor to build a driveway and connect utilities through your property, describe how much driveway you’re allowing. Even if the easement area will be 30 feet wide, you may not expect your neighbor to build a driveway that looks like a public street, with curbs and a sidewalk. You can and should say something like “Within the Easement Area, Grantee may construct a paved driveway up to X feet wide” so that you’re allowing a driveway, not a highway.

Erica Menze and Dean Alterman co-present a seminar for the American Bar Association

Last month our partners Erica Menze and Dean Alterman joined Patrick Bartman of Baird Holm LLP to present a 90-minute seminar on negotiating and drafting leases and easements for the Real Property, Trusts & Estates (RPTE) section of the American Bar Association. The seminar is one in a series, “Lay of the Land,” that RPTE is presenting this year to provide practical technical advice to newer real estate lawyers.

Alterman Law Group attorneys selected to Super Lawyers and Rising Stars lists for 2022

We’re very pleased to announce that Super Lawyers has named Dean Alterman to the 2022 Oregon Super Lawyers list, and Erica Menze to the 2022 Oregon Rising Stars list, both in the field of real estate law. Super Lawyers is a ratings service of Thomson Reuters. The annual selections are made using a patented multiphase process that includes a statewide survey of lawyers, an independent research evaluation of candidates and peer reviews by practice area.   No more than 5% of the lawyers in a state are named to the Super Lawyers list and no more than 2.5% of the lawyers in the state to the Rising Stars list.

Dean was first named to the Oregon Super Lawyers list in 2009, and Erica made her first appearance on the Oregon Rising Stars list in 2020.  Congratulations!

Erica Menze, Dean Alterman