Negotiation and Drafting Principles
Business Negotiations: When the Whole is Less than the Sum of the Parts
It’s an axiom of business that “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” Through the magic of synergy, a company can often create value by combining two or more things (e.g., businesses, products, marketing ideas) that interact positively and result in more than a purely additive outcome.
The same result can often be [...]
Control Freak
It’s usually easier to review a contract than to write one. It’s usually less expensive to review someone else’s draft. And it’s usually bad legal strategy to voluntarily agree to do so.
Once the basic terms of a legal agreement are decided, they are often given to the lawyers to “document” the deal. This is not [...]
When Clarity is a Curse and Vagueness a Virtue
A conference speaker recently stated that a company’s legal documents should avoid vague provisions like “the parties will use their best efforts to….”
I agree that clarity is generally a virtue in legal contracts. Except when it isn’t. Practicing law, like many things, is part “science” and part “art”. One of the “arts” is knowing when [...]
