the Zealous

No modification, variance, or waiver of this Agreement is valid unless in writing and signed by both parties.

Well, what's wrong with this clause? It facially makes sense. The parties should have the freedom of contract to agree as to how changes to their agreement can be validly made going forward. A writing requirement goes a long way to insulate the parties from fraudulent or frivolous oral claims.
 
And yet, preserving party autonomy compels the conclusion that whatever agreement may have been made before, it can and must be allowed to be unmade if the parties had the sufficient meeting of the minds to do so.

Those who make a contract, may unmake it. The clause which forbids a change, may be changed like any other. The prohibition of oral waiver, may itself be waived … What is excluded by one act, is restored by another. You may put it out by the door, it is back through the window. Whenever two men contract, no limitation self-imposed can destroy their power to contract again….

Beatty v. Guggenheim Exploration Co. (New York Ct. App. 1919) (Cardozo, J.).

r/ChatGPT 12.07.2024 post by reddituser E_Illuminate:

I'm an attorney practicing civil litigation. Without going to far into it, we represent a client who has been sued over a commercial licensing agreement. Opposing counsel is a collections firm. Definitely not very tech-savvy, and generally they just try their best to keep their heads above water. Recently, we filed a motion to dismiss, and because of the proximity to the trial date, the court ordered shortened time for them to respond. They filed an opposition (never served it on us) and I went ahead and downloaded it from the court's website when I realized it was late.

From Shapiro, Scott J., Legality, Harvard University Press (2013):

[M]ost legal academics and practitioners find the question “What is law?” distinctly unmoving. Unlike philosophers, they simply don’t see the point of worrying or speculating about the nature of law and frequently dismiss such questions as formal and arid, far too scholastic to be of any real interest or value. Richard Posner captured this sentiment well in his Clarendon Lectures: “I have nothing against philosophical speculation. But one would like it to have some pay-off; something ought to turn on the answer to the question ‘What is law?’ if the question is to be worth asking by people who could use their time in other socially valuable ways. Nothing does turn on it.”