Preface

• Author: William Allensworth, Ross J. Altman, Allen Overcash, and Carol J. Patterson
• Pages: xxvii-xxviii

Preface

xxvii

This text is unique in several respects, and we believe a word about its origins

is appropriate. Construction law is now a relatively well dened practice area.

The eld supports several journals, many scholarly treatises, and countless

continuing legal education programs. At the same time, construction law as

an academic subject is only now starting to enjoy the growth that the prac-

tice area has experienced over recent decades. The American Bar Association

Forum on the Construction Industry believes that the publication of this book

will facilitate the expansion of construction law education into law schools, as

well as provide a useful resource for construction law courses in other profes-

sional programs.

Several attributes of this book distinguish it from traditional law school

textbooks. Assimilation of construction law principles requires some working

knowledge of the construction contracting process, and the rst few chapters

of this textbook therefore focus on describing the business relationships among

parties to the construction process. The subject matters of these chapters do

not lend themselves to being taught through the standard casebook method,

and indeed the study of case law itself is not always a fruitful means of con-

veying information about how the parties to a construction project go about

doing business with each other. As a result, the text will be instructive to new

construction lawyers as well.

The book covers the many facets of the construction process—from initial

design through construction and concluding with the dispute resolution pro-

cess. Once the student has acquired some knowledge of the parties’ roles in

the more common project delivery systems, he or she can begin to study the

contracts that dene the parties’ respective rights and obligations, with special

emphasis on form contracts used in the industry. We have done this largely

through the prism of a typical small commercial construction project and the

American Institute of Architects contract forms that reect it.