Commercial Contracts

After money and people a business’s contracts are probably its most important assets.

For all businesses the terms and conditions on which they acquire goods and services are crucial, particularly if they are long term arrangements—perhaps a distributorship or agency contract or a joint venture or co-operation agreement or the contracts under which they access and use IT.

For B2B businesses their terms of sale are equally important. Whether they are the standard conditions of sale which cover all their transactions or bespoke documents to deal with a particular transaction—perhaps the development of technology for the sale of products to a particular customer.

Contracts terms are perhaps less important for B2C businesses as statute so limits them in dealing with consumers that consumer terms will often be little more than setting out what the business is supplying in the hope of avoiding claims from those who thought they were buying something different.

B2C businesses do however need to be sure that their documents and sales processes comply with any relevant regulations and follow the general guidance given by the Office of Fair Trading for consumer contracting.

The key purpose of all commercial contracts should be to ensure that the parties both (or all) understand exactly what they are agreeing. That needs clarity. Lack of understanding is most likely to lead to disputes. If the dispute would have happened anyway, lack of clarity is the best way of increasing legal costs and the chances of litigation. It is generally easy to decide whether the widget is made from a particular alloy. It can be much harder to decide whether it should have been made from that alloy.

Commercial contracts can also be very important for explaining to regulatory authorities, or HMRC, how the relationship between the parties works. In the absence of an agreement there is a greater risk of such bodies concluding that the relationship is what it looks like, not what it was intended to be.

At Warner Goodman Commercial we have lawyers who specialise in commercial contracts and who have probably worked with businesses in your industry in the past. If not they are very accustomed to learning new trades. We have particular specialisations in technology contracts (engineering and IT); in franchising, distribution and agency; in intellectual property licensing and confidentialily agreements; in international contracting (and a network of overseas lawyers to assist when necessary); in facilities management and in e-commerce and cloud computing.  We regularly assist SMEs in their contracting with much, much larger concerns, and generally get what they want for them.

For more information please contact Geoffrey Sturgess on 02380 717424 or by email geoffreysturgess@warnergoodman.co.uk or Steve Grant on  02392 776512 or by email stevengrant@warnergoodman.co.uk