Demystifying Contracts?
May 14th, 2010 by aberlaw
I have found that contracts and their contents are often too mysterious, and quite frankly it does not have to be this way; as a lawyer I can say this.
Why are signed contracts kept only in the legal department, and you have to contact a lawyer to look at them?
Why are they not available for the appropriate department (not necessarily all), so they can remain aware of the contracts that are important to them?
Of course there are confidentiality issues, and not all contracts should be available to everyone at a company, but to me why couldn’t the appropriate department ‘own’ (for lack of a better term) their contracts. Let’s take for example a Business Development Department at a company. These departments often have many types of unique business relationships with all sorts of soft and hard commitments (they buy and sell things, market together, collaborate, meet often, (i.e. a dynamic relationship)). These relationships usually span multiple years and are nurtured with many types of interactions which are usually contractually based/documented. Business development managers come and go, but the relationships survive and they do change. The goal is to avoid calls to the legal department (unless of course they have a question) as the appropriate people in the department can read a summary of the important terms online using a contract life cycle management system. There would be fewer of ‘I didn’t know that we even had contract with x company.’ This is not rocket science, but it sure could make a difference to the business development department and the company as a whole, as they would/should have fewer disputes and better relationships with their partners because of the transparency and demystification of the contracts. Think about it!
- Jeremy Aber
