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
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’
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
Lawyers are coached into an ‘unnatural way of being’ (according to Elizabeth de Stadler of Novcon) which covers how they behave in meetings, how they interact with colleagues and clients and how they write – from emails to contracts. She says we need to unlearn those behaviours as they create
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
There are two ways that law courts (at least in England) have interpreted contracts: literally and purposefully. The literal approach is the more classic or traditional way of interpreting documents. The problem with the literal approach is that it led contract writers into a number of sins: very detailed drafting
The process for creating contracts is dysfunctional so the language for creating contracts is dysfunctional… [Ken Adams] When time is tight, the only realistic way to record the legal content of the deal is to copy and paste from a similar deal. But does this really work for the buyer
Who do we… who should we write contracts to please? Not, as you’ve noticed, who do we write contracts for. But who should we write contracts to please. If a client asks me to write a contract for their business, there are two primary readers I need to consider: my
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