Did you or someone in your team ask another company for a copy of their terms so you could copy it/ be inspired by it/ steal ideas with pride? I know quite a few companies whose terms were ‘borrowed’ from a previous business, supplier, competitor, or employer. Bad for business
The purpose of a contract is to give you both the right and the duty to provide the entire scope envisaged in your agreement ie all the agreed goods, works and/or services. But what if you want to split up before then? As my book on Small Works says As all construction projects
I first came across lame clauses in 1995 when I read the back of a bungee jump ‘certificate’ and realised participants had effectively signed their lives away! More recently, my teenage sons signed up for an unexpected engineering task when they agreed to the safety rules for the mountain carts
A few years ago, we took our kids to Paris and promised them a trip up the Eiffel Tower. Our timing could not have been worse… it was mother’s day and the Tower was rammed. As the queues for the lifts were extensive, and we’d have ended waiting for hours,
Back in 2021, I worked in a team to simplify the terms and conditions for a global corporate. The principles agreed with the client include: using digits not words for numbers conversational tone ie ‘you’ as provider and ‘we’ as client must or will, instead of shall (due to its
When it comes to contracts, quality standards can present some real difficulties. Recently, Gary from Luxembourg challenged whether the clause in my sample letter of intent asking a contractor to use reasonable skill and care was ‘good enough’. Do you define an input or output standard? Or do you leave it to
A decade ago we got a supplier in to replace the doors in our house. At one point, Darryl – over 2m tall, burly and holding my housekeys – insisted I write a cheque there and then as final payment. I was too scared to refuse, even though he had not completed
If you own a mobile phone, did you read the terms and conditions before you bought or renewed it? Probably not. Did you even receive a copy of those terms or was it all done by frequent, annoying, and badly-timed calls followed up immediately with confusing emails requiring your e-signature?
You can improve trust in your contracts by creating transparency and clarifying expectations as well by explaining the consequences if the project veers off track. Although I am not generally a fan of using your contracts predominantly to set out what will happen if the project goes wrong, this post
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