Last week I was working with a specialist subcontractor client to improve their management of contractual risk (as their MD put it). As part of a workshop on Contract Awareness, I asked various staff to read a variety of T&C and answer questions such as: when are you going to
A smart contract means a ‘computer protocol intended to digitally facilitate, verify, or enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract.’ [source] From this definition, a smart contract is just the code – it has been said that it is neither smart nor a contract! More recently, the Law Commission
One of the key problems with contracts is knowing how and when to use them effectively. This decision should be part of a clear contract strategy. Even if you don’t have a mature contract strategy, any strategy is better than hope! As fellow speaker and internet marketing expert, Ian Brodie,
Whether you can avoid a letter of intent depends on where you are in the contract process – are you at the stage of deciding your contract strategy or are you about to start the construction phase? It can either be a strategic or tactical decision… Strategic If the client
Do we hate paperwork so much that we are prepared to start multi-million pound construction projects without a contract? The data The NBS Contracts and Law Survey 2018 (like its predecessors) highlights that roughly 1/3 of projects start without a proper contract being finalised. Like the 2015 survey it found:
Since 1977 lawyers have talked about the importance in contract formation of the ‘battle of the forms’. What is this and how does it affect you if you are in business? What is ‘the battle of the forms’? Lord Denning coined the phrase ‘battle of the forms’ in Butler Machine
In deciding whether a clause is unfair, a tribunal will consider whether your contract partner had a choice to accept or avoid a particular term. Many years ago, a highly influential judge, Lord Denning, said: None of you nowadays will remember the trouble we had – when I was called
Recently I came across a contact who had a standard footer on her emails, not about saving the environment but that ‘Any offers made in an email or attachments are subject to contract.’ It’s not just the lawyers who throw caution to the wind and bandy about ‘subject to contract’.
When is an offer not an offer but the award of a contract? When its a snake in the grass? The TCC recently has to grapple with the rights of the parties under a framework agreement, in unusual circumstances. What is a framework agreement? A framework agreement normally allows an
As a contract drafting lawyer, you might think that asking you to consider ‘should you bother with contracts?’ is a little like asking the proverbial turkey to vote for Thanksgiving or Christmas! Construction contracts in the UK have been around for about 150 years, with published standard forms a product