3 Business Benefits of Working With a Specialist Commercial Contracts Lawyer

Commercial contracts can make or break a business. For example, your business contracts can help you get paid on time, save you time and money and help dramatically limit your liability if you breach your contractual promises. As such, it is vital to invest in well-drafted and robust commercial contracts tailored to your business, for your protection. Working with an experienced commercial contracts lawyer can help you achieve this. This article will explore three key benefits of working with a specialist commercial contracts lawyer. 

Why Is Legal Advice Regarding Commercial Contracts Important?

Commercial contracts are vital for every business. A commercial contract records the terms on which commercial parties will do business. For example, by detailing the products or services you will provide, timeframes for delivery and payment terms. Without well-defined commercial contracts, significant problems such as mismatched expectations and contractual ambiguity can exist. Such problems can lead to customer complaints and, in the worst case, legal disputes in the courts. 

It is essential to take legal advice on your commercial contracts if you need support with them. Working with experienced lawyers can help you understand the critical legal issues relevant to your contracts and the risks your business is exposed to. 

Lawyers can help prepare contracts to mitigate against those potential risks and give you comfort when trading. We will now explore some benefits below.

1. A Commercial Contracts Lawyer Can Tell You Which Contracts You Need

There are several different types of commercial agreements. For example – supply contracts, franchise agreements, manufacturing agreements and software licence agreements. Those contracts can also take several different forms – for example, short or longer-form agreements. They could be full length contracts for customers to sign, or terms and conditions attached to an Order Form or Scope Of Work document. 

Legal and Commercial Factors to Consider

You must carefully consider different legal and commercial factors, including:

• Do you have the correct type of agreement, and is it fit for purpose? Does your agreement include the correct legal provisions to protect your business?

• Is your agreement fair and balanced? If your agreement contains extremely onerous terms, could this dissuade customers from working with you?

• Is your agreement tailored and bespoke enough to reflect your products or services accurately? A generic agreement could give rise to risks such as misunderstandings. 

• Does your agreement need to contain any mandatory legal terms required by law, such as data processing clauses required under the GDPR?

These are all key factors which an experienced commercial contracts lawyer can guide you on. A commercial contracts lawyer will advise you on which types of contracts you need and make best practice suggestions around how they should draft them.

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For instance, a lawyer may have good industry knowledge of what types of contract terms are common in your sector and what would be reasonable for customers to accept. This can add considerable value, particularly if your business is starting out or launching a new product or service.

2. Commercial Contracts Lawyers Can Protect You from Contractual Risks

Several contractual risks can arise at any stage during your business journey. 

For example:

• you could fail to deliver a big order to a customer due to unexpected events, e.g. a huge storm, which means your delivery team could not dispatch the order;

• a team member could accidentally cause a large personal data breach by leaving their device with sensitive customer information on a train; or

• your biggest customer could stop paying invoices on time, severely impacting your business cash flow.

Protecting your business from contractual risk could be a make or break in these circumstances. 

By working with an experienced commercial contracts lawyer, you can identify and foresee risks to help ‘future-proof’ your business. For example, your lawyer can help draft robust terms which protect you in the circumstances above. For instance, your terms could limit your liability to the customer to reduce the damages you need to pay if you fall into breach of your obligations. This could help your business hugely under challenging circumstances when things do not go as smoothly as you planned during your business contracts. 

3. Commercial Contracts Lawyers Can Help You Successfully Negotiate Deals 

Savvy business customers will often seek to negotiate contracts, particularly where you, as a supplier, are trading on your own standard terms and conditions. Understandably, you may want to get new deals over the line and not worry about legal requests. Or you may struggle to understand the implications of the negotiated terms which your customers request. This is where a specialist commercial lawyer can add significant value.

A lawyer can help with negotiations in several ways, including:

• reviewing negotiated terms or contracts requested by your customers and advising you on them; 

• flagging to you any high-risk issues and requests you should not agree you; 

• helping you understand whether negotiated terms are reasonable or not;

• negotiating terms on your behalf, therefore taking some of the pressure away from you; and

• helping you reach successful agreements by working with your customers’ lawyers to reach an acceptable resolution for both sides.

Commercial contracts lawyers are often heavily experienced in dealing with negotiations and understand their client’s businesses and what risks a business may accept. By working with professional lawyers, you may be able to help address your customers’ concerns quicker and more comprehensively. You will also be comfortable knowing that your lawyer will represent your best interests in negotiations and that you fully understand your negotiated contracts and the risks to watch out for. 

In summary, there are several ways in which working with a specialist commercial contracts lawyer can benefit your business, protect you from risk and help you negotiate new deals successfully. 

Key Takeaways

Commercial contracts are essential for every business. However, commercial agreements do not follow a one-size-fits-all approach. Your business should invest in well-defined contracts which are fit for purpose and tailored to reflect your business activities. Working with an experienced, specialist commercial contracts lawyer can help your business in many ways.

For example, you can have comfort that your contracts are fit for purpose and protect your business from challenging risks it could face when trading. Your lawyer can also support you with negotiations, helping you smoothly conclude new contracts and win new business. 

If you need help with a commercial contract, LegalVision’s experienced contract lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents. Call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.