Commercial contracts

We can advise you on contracts that you receive from suppliers and help you to negotiate the bet terms for your business . We provide you with insights into your risks and the practical effects on your business of the obligations created by each contract. If all you need is a heads up on whether the agreement is balanced or one-sided and what is means for you, we will give you that based on our wide industry experience and flag obstacles and opportunities for you.

We can draft specific terms for one-off and ongoing projects with collaborators, suppliers and customers and help you to negotiate and record the arrangements in a way that accurately reflects what has been agreed and deals with a range of what if scenarios in case matters don’t go according to plan.

We help with all commercial contracts from non-disclosure agreements to business terms; collaboration and development agreements to joint ventures and franchising; licensing, distribution and business asset or share sales. We provide plain English drafting from accessible and dynamic lawyers who believe that your legal contracts are as much a part of your customer communications as your sales team and social media.

The main issues that typically arise in commercial contract negotiations are:

1. Accurately describing the goods or services being provided and setting delivery dates for those. We can structure your contracts so that it is easy to amend the goods and services but retain all of the main terms.
2. Warranties are usually given and generally requested in contracts and we can advise you what is reasonable to expect and to provide in a contract.
3. As a supplier or manufacturer, it is crucial to limit your liability under a contract. As a customer, you want to know you are getting the best contractual cover possible. We can help you navigate through limitations and exclusions of liability.
4. Termination provisions and the right to give notice vary hugely in contracts. We work with you to give your business security of term or flexibility to terminate depending on your business needs.
5. Force majeure was known as a ‘boilerplate’ clause and largely ignored, but the recent pandemic has pushed the need to pause contracts and sometimes cancel them into focus. We can advise you about business interruption and draft sensible commercial terms to address ‘force majeure’.