The BUSKLAW Newsletter

It's 2019! Time to dust off the real - or virtual - dust covering those contracts in your real - or virtual - file cabinet and take a look at them for potential problems waiting to blossom into disputes that could lead to costly litigation. So pick one of your more important business contracts and review the following provisions to see if any of these concerns hit home:    > Identification of the Parties. For some reason lost in the annals of time, lawyers often identify the contracting parties with names that are similar, as in "Licensee and Licensor," "Lessor and Lessee," and "Obligor and Obligee." But this practice is ill-advised because the drafter is susceptible to using the names incorrectly, and the reader must stop and figure out their meaning based only on the last two letters of the name. So rather than use these confusingly similar names, why not simply use the real names of the parties after first identifying their legal relations...

Most of you are business professionals and thus are involved with contracts. Depending on the nature of your enterprise, you have various contracts in force, for example:  >sales agreements >purchase agreements >real estate leases >purchase order terms and conditions >software license and maintenance agreements >service agreements >equipment maintenance agreements >consulting agreements >contractor agreements >employment agreements >non-disclosure agreements >non-compete agreements >transportation or logistics agreements >financial institution agreements Perhaps you work with these documents on a regular basis and are familiar with their content. Or you pay a high-priced law firm to do that for you. More commonly, however, you keep these documents in a file cabinet, rarely review them, and only call your expensive big-firm lawyer when there are problems with the transaction. Whatever the case, consider the ...