Contracts and Agreements

As a business owner, you undoubtedly will need to deal with contracts and agreements. These contracts and agreements may include: commercial lease agreements, employment agreements, client contracts, vendor or service provider agreements, service level agreements (SLAs), licensing and usage agreements, sales and purchase agreements and other business-level agreements.

Contracts and agreements often go through multiple rounds of redlining and negotiations in order to reach a final contract or agreement that is mutually satisfactory to the parties. During this process, it’s vital that you review carefully every contract and agreement yourself, highlight and red flag any sections that are questionable, raises concerns, are unclear and/or require further clarification and/or explanation.

While not every contract and agreement requires consultation with legal counsel (as you review and work with more contracts and agreements, you will become more experienced on what is standard and acceptable and what is not), you should know when to seek legal counsel.

Some business owners overuse legal counsel relying solely on counsel to deal with every contract and agreement; racking up the legal bills and never truly understanding the full terms of the agreement until a situation comes to fruition. Other business owners will avoid seeking counsel at all costs so they don’t need to spend the money but risk entering into an agreement which inures mostly to the benefit of the other party. It’s important to consult with counsel, when necessary, to avoid getting yourself and your business into a bad situation.