Business owners and senior managers spend their time concentrating on doing what they do best – running their businesses. This means that they are very close to whatever their current ‘big’ project is, and may have spent months negotiating their agreements by the time they send them to their lawyers. In such situations, therefore, it’s mostly not sloppiness on their part, which results in things being missed – but simply a case of ‘not seeing the wood for the trees’, or of seeing what they want to see, rather than what is actually written.

Accordingly, whilst the question ‘Is this contract OK?’ may not be an unreasonable one for a client to ask, I strongly believe that it is not one the adviser should answer. I therefore found it quite frustrating when a client told me that whilst her terms and conditions had previously been reviewed by more than one lawyer, who had told her they were ‘OK’, I was the only one who had told her ‘how [she] could further protect [her] business’ – and it was that comment which spurred me on to write this post.

Chris – I wholeheartedly agree that the time to discuss expectations if before pen is put to paper. Unfortunately, in my experience, what mostly happens is that the ‘expectations’ remain in the heads of the business people and never actually get translated into the written word. This is generally down to the fact that an ‘off the shelf’ or ‘cut and paste’ contract has been used which makes no reference to these things – and is not understood by (and therefore cannot be challenged by) the client.

In the cases I referred to, I would describe all the clients as ‘business savvy’ – in fact one of them is the CEO of an international operation – but the contract he had been presented with was so convoluted and long-winded that it was difficult for him to see the wood for the trees as it were. Clarity is in everyone’s interests – and your last sentence is spot-on, Chris!