Paragon Legal reposted this
President & COO of Paragon Legal delivering the best flex talent for your legal team | super annoying about playing pickleball | big fan of dogs | purposefully will have typos in my posts
I never want to see a contract again after I sign it. If I need to, I’m getting ready. But still The actions of getting to a signed contract is the most inportant thing a business can do. Let me share an analogy Before Trista Engel and I started working together we were friends. We did a lot of work to make sure it was right for us to partner together. One piece of that was scenario planning. We came up with 50 or maybe even more scenarios that could happen if we decided to do this. About life. About work. How would we handle X if Y happened. We talked through all of them how we would handle them when we were of rational thought and mind. Some of these scenario discussions got heated, but ultimately, we came to agreement, wrote down how we would handle, and not to give away the ending, we decided to work together. Now, if one of those scenarios comes up, do I refer to the document 8 years later? Not usually, but we may from time to time. We have a framework to work through it. And maybe we follow what we said many years ago, but usually, we have a new discussion. Leveraging the values and care of the original discussion. Now, if there’s a scenario that we never thought of because it seemed impossible, do we just go crazy because we have nothing to guide us? No, because again we have a framework to work through it. And let me tell ya, in 8 years, we’ve encountered a whole heck of a lot of “we never in a million years would have thought of this” scenarios. A contract may not be something I’m going to follow to the letter, but it’s a framework for how I’m going to work with someone. And is a guide for what happens if I hit a planned or unplanned scenario. Maybe I follow the original contract, maybe I don’t. I have a starting point for a negotiation. Either way, the actions in getting to a signed contract (of any kind) where you set the partnership up for success. Inspired by Laura Frederick’s awesome post yesterday. #contracts #inhousecounsel #legalops
Ron Bell
1mo
Jessica Markowitz The process of wrestling with issues, deciding how to resolve them, and coming to agreement is far more valuable day to day than the piece of paper which reflects those understandings. The contract embodies terms, while the relationship embodies trust. While a good contract can help in disputes, a good relationship can avoid them in the first place.
Trista Engel
1mo
There have most definitely been more "I never would have ever thought of this" scenarios than there have been scenarios that we plan for. And importantly, for the ones we did plan for, the purpose of the agreement was not to give each other the right to sue if we deviated - it was to be able to deviate successfully.
Laura Frederick
1mo
Jessica Markowitz I'm so glad you shared all this and I appreciate the tag. We need to teach new lawyers and contract professionals exactly this. Business people aren't looking for one-upmanship or sneaky wins. They want a framework for working together with their counterparty.
Lewis Bretts
1mo
So true - good advice for all sorts of relationships!
Biotech Counsel & Part-Time Troublemaker @ Novartis IMI | Modern Counsel 35 under 35 | 2023 Legal Disruptor | Driven #Intrapreneur |
1moThe issue is often the friction between the framework you just described and what the paper actually says. There is a translation job here to be done by lawyers, but the main issue we often see with it is that the business is not involved enough to ensure the framework is translated right. "Leaving contracts to Legal" is therefore a sizeable error since it doesn't allow the parties to actually get the document to say what they need it to say. Business partnering truly comes both ways in this situation. At the end of the day though, good faith business folks deal with contractual disputes exactly like you do: they see this as relationship-based and try to find a compromise for what the paper should've said in the first place. The issue is that good faith can be a fleeting thing, too... Not between you both though :)