Collaborative Valentine's Day clause

One of the more time-consuming aspects in contracting is caused by the unavailability of adequate contract clauses and lack of collaboration. About 80 per cent of lawyers worldwide either draft specialty clauses from scratch, review and marks-up contracts without pre-defined language or must fall back on merely an unstructured (personal) folder with sample clauses.

Bespoke drafting as the rule

Did you know that in an average organisation, 75 per cent of all first-draft contracts are created by the counterparty? (Capgemini established this in a major years-spanning global survey into contracting practices.) Combined with the unavailability of a well-structured clause library in 80 per cent of the cases, it implies that a legal counsel’s contracting work is mostly done ad hoc. That is quite a risky practice!

Contracting as an individual’s responsibility

I often ask customers if they adopted a central contracting policy. Almost invariably, contracting is considered to be the responsibility of the individual legal counsel (at best defined by their BU-dedicated team). An ISO certification auditor would dismiss such a working method as non-conform and irresponsible.

LinkedIn contacted me

In the last three weeks, Weagree has launched a platform of model contracts, where legal professionals can share their model contracts and model clauses. Our initiative was noticed by some 55,000 legal professionals worldwide.

The initiative also led to the growth of our LinkedIn community Drafting contracts with some 2,500 new members. The group’s success did not go unnoticed. LinkedIn ( ! ) has contacted me to collaborate with them on improving LinkedIn groups. That is because our LinkedIn group Drafting contracts is unique: no advertisements, only meaningful discussions…

...and a collaborative attitude.?

Valentine’s Day Card

…and sometimes a light-hearted post – like the contract clause shared in the Drafting contracts community – drafted as a Valentine’s Day Card (the “Card”). Although I have a lot to say about the drafting style and quality, the clause is well thought-out (?)

The drafter provided for all desirable aspects of such clause. He probably discussed the clause with his colleagues. In one hour after sharing his clause in the LinkedIn community, some 100 members acknowledged (liked) this. Some members proposed missing clause aspects.

Collaborating on model contracts and sharing excellent model clauses with colleagues elevates contracting practices. It reduces contract risks. Not to mention accelerating contract flow. Happy Valentine!?

Model clause-library clauses