WHY THIS, NOT THAT™ CONTRACTS | Contract Design

DO THIS

When drafting a contract, consider overall contract design.

NOT THAT

Focus exclusively on the terms within the contract itself.

WHY?

“The medium is your message.”

A contract may be written by lawyers, but it not intended for use by lawyers.

Legal design expert, Marty Finestone recently wrote a series of posts on this topic that really resonated with me. See links in comments.

“The medium is the message” is a phrase coined by the Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan and means content and medium are so intertwined, the central message or effect is not in the content it carries, but in the way it’s presented.

When drafting your contract, keep that in mind. Your audience is usually made up of business people who use the contract to memorialize expectations. How do you best communicate that?

As simply and as straightforward as possible and without legalese.

One way to do that – place standard terms and conditions in one list at the back of contract.

After all, the only people who generally look at those provisions are the lawyers.

Interested in learning more? Join the convo on LinkedIn.