Showstoppers are A clause or term that could bring negotiations or your contract to a juddering halt Over the past 9 months, my newsletters have proposed a series of tips, tools and techniques to spot and solve showstoppers. What should you do? Do you work with or for your clients?
I have been reading The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth (author of the Etymologicon) in which he explains and illustrates some of the figures of rhetoric. I was struck by how many of these are beloved of lawyers and contract writers, without their users even being aware that they
How did we get here? How did we get to the point where contracts in the UK construction industry no longer help companies do business? One of the aims of standard forms was to reduce the time you spend writing, negotiating, assessing risk transfer and pricing your responsibilities on a
Now you are convinced of the benefits of readable contracts [read more], this post describes a process for writing those contracts with ideas from ‘The Art of Readable Writing’ (1949) by Rudolph Flesch. Effective Writing It is common ground that the [contract] in this case would win no drafting prizes
In ‘the Art of Readable Writing’ (1949) Rudolph Flesch provides advice that applies to writers of legal documents as well as blog posts, books, and other media. Here are some of his tips, with relevant legal examples, to help you write contracts that others can read, understand and use. Benefits
Most consultant appointments allow a licence for your client to use your drawings and designs for the Project for which you created them; and if your client uses them for other purposes then you are not liable for such use. How ‘the Project’ is defined will affect how your client
Every June, that tiny window of opportunity to climb Everest passes for another year. At high altitude our brains are less effective, so it is critical to have a simple plan that categorically defines the walk away point, however close the group is to the summit. Climbers talk of summit
In a series of articles for journals and LinkedIn, I have outlined my view of contracting as a process, rather than treating contracts as stand-alone documents and their creation as drive-by events. A contract process maturity model This is a tool designed to refine this idea and future-proof your contracting
An indemnity is a promise to pay A’s losses if a trigger event occurs [read more]. But how do they pass risk on construction projects? Managing risk If someone else fails to spot your defective work, does it reduce the amount of your indemnity? No. Greenwich Millennium v Essex Services
Does this sound like you? When we set up our consultancy practice, like many professionals we cobbled (cut + paste) together an appointment from documents we’d been provided by our professional body and or obtained from other consultants. We took an ‘that seems to look right’ or ‘it covers most