"A lawyer drafting a licensing agreement need not have prior experience in that field before agreeing to perform the task," say the ethics experts, "but the lawyer must be able, whether through experience, study, or consented association with knowledgeable co-counsel, to perform the task competently and with reasonable dispatch." Vincent R. Johnson, Ethical Issues in Drafting Licensing Agreements, 458 PLI/PAT 173, 176 (1996).

Thankfully, "study" need not involve further schooling—or even lots of time.

For example, you can turn to the Drafting License Agreements database (DLICA). DLICA contains the full text of Drafting License Agreements, a publication that incorporates the insights of 23 experts on all aspects of copyright, patent, and trademark licensing agreements. This publication contains dozens of sample agreements, as well as sample contract provisions for a wide range of situations and legal concerns. Although DLICA contains links to cited authorities, this is a publication written for working lawyers, not legal scholars.

An easy way to view the contents and retrieve relevant sections is to use the Table of Contents service. ResultsPlus® is available for this database.