Category: Real Estate

The ABA publishes the fourth edition of “From Handshake to Closing”

Cover of "From Handshake to Closing - Fourth Edition"

Dean Alterman is again in print!  This month the Real Property, Trusts and Estates section of the American Bar Association published Dean’s third book, Dean’s revision and expansion of “From Handshake to Closing: The Role of the Lawyer in a Commercial Real Estate Transaction”  by the late Sidney G. Saltz.  The book describes what commercial real estate lawyers do as a transaction progresses from a letter of intent through the purchase and sale agreement, due diligence, title review, financing, and closing, all interwoven with some of Dean’s aphorisms on legal writing: using defined terms, modernizing archaic language, and avoiding the passive voice.  (One snarky entry in the index reads “Voice, passive, to be avoided.”)

Dean Alterman to speak at RELU on landlocked parcels

Illustration of a landlocked parcel without access to a public road

The program at the 2025 annual meeting and conference of the Real Estate and Land Use section of the Oregon State Bar, known fondly to lawyers in the field as RELU, includes a presentation by Dean Alterman on landlocked parcels.  A parcel might be legally landlocked because, like the parcel in the illustration, it does not front on a public road and has no legal access to a public road.  It might be factually landlocked because even though it fronts on a public road, a river or chasm might cut most of the parcel off from the public road.  Or it might be legally but not factually landlocked: what if a private road runs through the parcel, but the owner of the parcel doesn’t have the legal right to use the road?  Dean’s presentation covers how lawyers can advise clients in any of these three unfortunate situations, interspersed with discussions of the rights and obligations of adjoining landowners, set off by quotations from Robert Frost.  Who has the right to use old private roads if, as Frost wrote in Mending Wall, “no one has seen them made or heard them made”?  Dean will answer that question, and others, on August 23 at RELU.

Erica Menze and Dean Alterman will teach how to draft easements

Tomorrow Dean Alterman and Erica Menze will present a session on negotiating and drafting easement agreements at the annual conference of the Real Estate and Land Use Section of the Oregon State Bar. Here’s a sneak peek at one of our practice pointers: the passive voice is to be avoided. If you want to impose an obligation on a party, don’t say “the obligation shall be done”; say “Party X must perform the obligation.” For example, if you want the grantee to maintain a driveway, don’t say “the driveway will be maintained”; say “Grantee will maintain the driveway . . . ” and then add the specifics, such as ” . . . as a 12-foot wide all-weather gravel road, passable by cars and light trucks.” Another pointer: provide a legal description not just for the grantor’s tract and the grantee’s tract, but also for the easement area. Don’t encumber the grantor’s entire tract with the easement if the accessway will use only a small part of it.

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