Whether you are a customer or a supplier, ensuring that your contracts with third parties protect your business and knowing what minimum protections there should be – can sometimes be an unnerving task.
So, where do you start? Clearly, each side will have different priorities and principles that they want to protect. What is important to a customer may not be important to a supplier, and vice versa. Is it possible to reach a consensus where both sides actually get what they want? It rather depends on how each side behaves at the negotiation table and where the balance of bargaining power rests!
Without the right advice, contract negotiations can end up delving into all possible risks, without assessing the likelihood that such outcomes will, in fact, occur. It is therefore important to ensure that both sides have a clear understanding of the differences between probabilities and consequences, and that they identify, focus on and address key issues and risks.
Good legal advice at an early stage can help ensure your position is protected and the key elements and principles are concluded appropriately. Although these top 10 are based on our extensive experience of drafting and negotiating a variety of different types of commercial contracts for clients in all sectors, we recognise that each company will have their own priorities and negotiation style.
If you would like a copy of our guide, please contact us.
