I love it when people send me copies of monstrous T&C to me… I’m very nosey. I love to see providers think are the most appropriate words to create loyal customers and good relationships. A particularly sticky example was sent to me by Lee Jackson (a speaker on ‘getting good’
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
It is relatively simple to work out what the success of a project looks like. For a construction project, the focus will be on the core aims of time, cost and quality, and more recently wider issues such as environmental, social or governance (ESG). A construction project score might rate
At the 2023 World Commerce and Contracting Summit, Elizabeth de Stadler from Novcon said: we should not lose sight of what we are actually here to do: which after all is to… help clients to form relationships and to define the rules of those relationships in a way that is
You and I both know that contracts (T&C, agreements, legal documents etc) in their traditional sense are not usable. They are drafted in a way which means understanding and use is reserved for experts or technicians in the law. They are written by lawyers for lawyers. But as Tessa Manuello
The benefit of using a Defined Term (usually with initial capital letters) in a contract or legal document is that it makes it easier to read, and consistent. However… when used to excess they can easily backfire: elements of the commercial deal do not belong in a definitions section, acronyms
We need contracts that are easy to operate and easy to use to gather relevant data. Simplification deals with the easy to operate bit. At the World Commerce and Contracting EMEA Summit 2022, Stefania Passera, their designer-in-residence challenged her audience of contract and procurement specialists to rethink contracts. She suggested
Although I am a fervent advocate for simpler contracts [see better contracts by design, or steps to simplification], for many businesses a simple document in MS Word is no longer enough. In 2017, I helped The Federation of Master Builders move from complex text documents to adobe forms (an editable
When I first started my journey to contracts in just 500 words, I focused mostly on content. Simple balanced effective content. I worked with an information designer who added some visuals, structure and design. I didn’t want my samples to look like walls of text! Together we had the beginnings
There is a growing global movement towards plain language contracts, especially for individuals or consumers. What does plain language mean and is it enough? What is plain language? According to the Plain Language Federation (and this is the definition in the proposed new ISO on the topic): A communication is
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