Contracts and procurement

Most legal exposure a business carries did not arise from litigation. It was written into a contract at the point it was signed. Contracts and procurement work addresses that exposure before it accrues: drafting and reviewing the commercial agreements a business enters into, and the procurement documentation that governs how it buys goods and services from others.

Commercial contracting

Supply agreements, distribution agreements, services agreements and licensing arrangements each carry their own risk allocation: who bears the cost of a defect, what happens on late delivery, how liability is capped, and what triggers termination. Reviewing these terms before signature, rather than relying on a counterparty's standard draft, is where most contracting risk is actually managed. Vendor documentation follows a similar pattern: onboarding agreements, service-level terms and termination provisions that determine how cleanly a commercial relationship can be wound down if it needs to be.

Procurement

Procurement documentation (tender conditions, bid documentation and evaluation criteria) governs how a business selects and contracts with its suppliers and contractors. Getting these terms right at the tender stage avoids disputes later about what was actually promised, particularly where a procurement process involves multiple bidders and a formal evaluation.

What to get right at drafting stage

Dispute resolution clauses, indemnity provisions and limitation of liability terms are frequently treated as standard language and left to whichever party drafted the document first. They are, in practice, the terms that determine how a dispute is resolved if the relationship breaks down: whether it goes to arbitration or to court, which law applies, and how much of the loss either side actually has to bear. A business has to decide, contract by contract, how much negotiating weight to put behind these terms relative to the commercial terms that usually get the attention, since favourable pricing on a poorly drafted contract does not, in the end, hold up on its own.