CEO of Radiant Law and author of SIGN HERE: the enterprise guide to closing contracts quickly
Contracting is a team sport, and to get better together you need to move tacit knowledge into shared explicit knowledge about both the process and the content of deals. The new edition of the book is out on 24 June, and I explore this point further including why contracting is probably a weak-link game (rather than strong-link) because the strength of both a particular deal and the overall process will depend on each participant getting their parts right. #FootballNotBasketball #YourPartCounts
Rob Jarrett
5mo
And as we know, contracting is not just for the lawyers. So the team extends to Procurement, Sales and other stakeholders that need to feed into the process to make it a success.
David Sinclair
5mo
It’s not just a team sport. It’s a relationship building opportunity with a counterparty. When building templates engage with the business to understand the risk appetite and walkaway issues before drafting and try and draft templates that are easier to negotiate and accept. I got tired of hearing “we can’t make changes to our template” as a response to a reasonable request for ameding highly unreasonable terms. Way too much time and effort is wasted in negotiations, particularly on which parties onerous and often impossible to implement policies and procedures apply to the parties conduct. We need a more win-win approach from the outset. This can be baked into templates and processes with management’s express understanding and acceptance.
Antti Innanen
5mo
Contracting is a contact sport! You will have a puncher's chance to making it better. 🥊
"A fighting chance of actually making it better" 👍
Lucio Orazi
5mo
Contracting is like a team sport, sharing knowledge boosts performance. The new book sounds intriguing! 📚🔍 #KnowledgeIsPower
Graeme J.
5mo
Some really important points covered clearly in less than a minute. Well done!
I help businesses to anchor in-house legal and compliance strategies, in just two days.
5moReally valuable and clean division! Two other thoughts on this: - another benefit of writing it down is that it often exposes that everyone is on autopilot. - a beneficial prior exercise to mapping both the process and the template / playbook can be to sit down internally with a blank sheet of paper and discuss the promises you need from the contract, the promises you're willing to give, the benefits you think you're getting and the realistic risks you're trying to close off. Sometimes that will be faster to drop out of the playbook mapping exercise, but going back to first principles might help accelerate. Would be curious as to whether that second point applies to your wider experience, or whether it's an unnecessary step.