Legal - Basic Legal
Streetwise Tips

Streetwise Tips on Contracts

Whenever possible, provide the contract yourself. Don’t use someone else’s. You may save the cost of creating a contract, but you will lose that important control over content advantage a contract gives you.

* Understand it

Understanding “legalese” may seem like an overwhelming task, if not an impossibility. But if you intend to build a growing business you need to become comfortable with contracts, their language, and their meaning. You should have your lawyer review every contract you don’t fully understand. And you should have him or her carefully and clearly explain any terms or passages you don’t completely understand.

As a business person you must understand that every business transaction has implications for your company. Don’t sign anything blindly. Get past the legal jargon so that you can fully understand the contracts you are signing and be able to protect the best interests of your business.

* Standardize

If your business involves a lot of contracts, negotiate hard-to-get customers and vendors to adhere as closely as possible to your standard contract. Changing a long contract takes a lot of hard and time-consuming work. Any change in contractual wording requires that the entire contract be reviewed and proofed again. A change in one area can create misleading implications in another area of the contract. And a simple retyping can result in a serious typographical errors or omissions.

Any substantive change needs to be viewed suspiciously. Are there hidden implications that the other party has insisted upon?

Standardization can save you time, money, and headaches.

* Safekeeping

It is so easy to misplace contracts—even crucial ones. Keep copies of your contracts in your bank safe deposit box. If the contract is particularly important, have your lawyer keep a copy on file as well. Have one or more office copies available for easy reference. Don’t use the original as your reference copy!