Edition #7: what it means to be in-house counsel; dealing with difficult negotiations; legal events

Welcome to this week's How to Contract Newsletter. We've included contract tips and other great resources and information.

This Week's Featured Tip

Laura’s contract tip is about what we do as in-house contract lawyers and professionals.

“Yes, we work on contracts.

But that is often just a small part of the job. It is the equivalent of saying a CPA's job is math.

We are first and foremost risk mitigators.

Our job is to learn everything we can about the types of risks we face with our business and counterparties and then draft, negotiate, and manage contracts to make it not so risky.

To do that, we need to understand pretty much everything about the company. And when I say everything, I mean everything.

We do this so we can help steer the deals to provide the best protection possible.

We have to understand the products - the engineering, the quality control, the suppliers, the shipment, the problems, and everything else.

But we don't stop with the products. We also have to know about everything else the company does - accounting, marketing, HR, IT, manufacturing, product development. Etc., etc., etc.

?Commercial contracts lawyers and professionals are jacks of all trades.

?Joining a company to work on commercial contracts can be quite overwhelming at first. But for most of us, the breadth of knowledge and responsibility becomes the best part of the job.”

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Other Recent Contract Tips

• Using detachment in the face of difficult negotiations ?
• Deciding where to focus your attention during your contract review
• Budgeting your asks and gives in a contract negotiation
• Drafting termination for convenience provisions
• Claim notice language in an indemnification provisio n

Want to read more of Laura's contract tips? Follow her on?LinkedIn !?You can also?get access ?to the full library of her contract tips and cartoons (there are more than 380!) for $19/month!??

Upcoming Events??

• August 18, 2022 — Live Q&A “Contract All-Stars: How to Get to YES Faster” . If you’re struggling to reduce negotiation times and manage the back and forth, tune into this live Q&A with contract all-stars Laura Frederick , Nada Alnajafi , Laura Garcia, and Alex Su to hear their tips and tricks for preparing better agreements. The recording will be available to all the registrants.
• September 22, 2022 — Paid webinar “The Indeminar: Indemnities in IT Contracts”. This webinar will address indemnities; intellectual property? indemnities, including typical and troubling exceptions; data incident indemnities; advanced indemnities: The “Cause Problem”; limit of liability, limit on indemnity obligations. The recording will be available upon request for two weeks.

Media Appearance

Laura sat down with Tanner Jones of the LAWsome podcast to discuss why lawyers need a specialized contractor, outline key advantages when hiring external vendor contractors, identify challenges firms face when contract drafting, as well as give tips for lawyers learning the skill of contract drafting and debunk myths in legal negotiation. Check out the episode here.

Free Resources

How to Contract's Free Resources ?-?Sign up to receive access to How to Contract's free?resources?including webinars, checklists, negotiation scripts, ebooks, and more. Our team will be updating this product, so make sure to check back in the future for new contract tools.

How to Contract's Job Exchange LinkedIn Group ?-?Lawyers and professionals can find contract-related roles and companies find those lawyers and professionals to fill those roles. This group is open to anyone so request access today.

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Hope you enjoyed this week's newsletter. Email us at?[email protected] ?for any feedback or suggestions and ways that we can provide you with value through the newsletter.

Thanks as always for your support!

Best,

Laura Frederick, Founder and President of How to Contract LLC