Simplifying contracts is not just a matter of taking each clause and making it plainer language. Our task is also to ensure all the contracting documents fit together neatly. Our goal is seamless sales… from start to finish! Coffee on the go We were asked to help a coffee business
The purpose of your contracts is to help you do business. Another way of thinking of this based on success – as Jacqueline Horani said at the World Commerce and Contracting Vibe Summit 2023, contracts are tools to help ‘both sides of the agreement to achieve and fulfil their goals.’
Have you ever asked directions from a stranger, only to find that you forgot the very first item by the end of their explanation? Have you ever asked someone to give you a recipe, and then wish you’d written it down? Some things are better kept simple and broken into
Deals will be simpler to agree if the buyer doesn’t rely on their commercial power – they hold the purse strings – to create one-sided agreement terms. Here are my top 10 nasties to avoid: One-sided flexibility: Wide rights for the buyer to end the contract at any time for any
Once you’ve signed your deal, how easy is it to change? The unexpected has a nasty way of cropping up, so apart from instant one-off transactions, your contracts, agreements and T&C need to include a clear mechanism allowing the buyer and seller to tweak the details. But what if it
The literal reading of a formula for rent increases was irrational, arbitrary or illogical. But what were the court’s powers to override an express clause in the lease? The purpose of the clause was to increase the rent each year by a cost of living rate (the retail price index).
Contract professionals, contract writers and lawyers are trained to build in ‘comfort blankets’ ie to make contracts cosy for their client or organisation. As a result contracts have become overly full of clauses which are little more than comfort blankets eg the miscellaneous or boilerplate terms. Since not many users
‘There are two things wrong with almost all legal writing. One is its style. The other is its content’ – Fred Rodell (1936). Despite having nearly 100 years to improve, legal writing is still awful. Researchers in cognitive science from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA) have analysed the major
How many customers does your organisation lose before you even know it? You have no idea about the business you never heard from because they walked away [David Avrin] When does the customer experience start? It is often well before your first contact with them. The internet has profoundly changed
The process of getting a deal done should be simple – but somehow we often far more complex than it needs to be… through time pressures, through inconsistency, or through burying our heads! In a recent English court case (CLS Civil v WJG Evans), the buyer and the supplier tied
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