Every business should practice the main thing while agreeing to review the contract before signing it thoroughly. In a contracting process, the key part is to review the contract. Reviewing the contract will help the business to understand the terms and conditions it agrees to by signing that contract. Contract review helps a business reduce organizational risks and ensures a positive impact on the business in the long run.

Contract review is a detailed examination of an agreement before signing it in order to ensure that everything mentioned in the agreement is accurate and clear. Without a detailed contract review, the business might agree to some terms of the agreement that it cannot fulfil before the expiry of the contract. This can harm the brand value and reputation of the business. Contract reviewing can sometimes be complicated. Therefore, businesses can take help from professional lawyers who can help review the contract so that there will be no mistakes.

While reviewing a contract, a business should be careful and look at every detail of the contract. Following are the things you must look out for a while reviewing a contract: -

Terms and Conditions

In a contract, every sentence is important and should get checked thoroughly. However, some parts are more significant than the other terms. As we all know, every company has different objectives and goals; therefore, the terms that are considered important in the contract vary from industry to industry. But there are some parts of the contract which every business should consider important and give a closer look. Terms like termination, dispute, indemnification, and confidentiality are important sections of the contract that should be reviewed properly. Businesses should add the terms and conditions in the contract review checklist. The business should devote extra time to reviewing to ensure that the language used is accurate on these specific terms.

Termination and Renewal Terms

Every business should make sure that before signing any contract or entering into any agreement, they should check the terms and conditions related to termination and renewal matters. The management of the business should completely understand the termination and renewal terms before signing the agreement. Ignoring this part in the contract can cause the business to get locked into an agreement that will last longer than expected. This can affect the business's daily activities and deviate its operations from its goal or objective.

The business should know how to cancel the agreement before expiry and what repercussions it has to face if the agreement gets cancelled earlier. This will help the management to analyze the situation before taking any decision. Knowing about the termination dates will help the business maintain the speed of its operations to meet the deadline. Termination and renewal terms should get added to the contract review checklist.

Clear Language

Businesses, before entering into any agreement, must check the language of each sentence in the contract. To ensure that the meaning of each sentence is clear and accurate. There should be no such sentence in the contract that can get left out for interpretation. If a sentence is open to interpretations in the contract, both parties can interpret it differently. This might lead to conflicts between the parties and cause delays in the agreement's completion and closing. The language used in the contract should be clear-cut with no confusion in it. To be more accurate in this part, businesses can hire a professional attorney. The attorney can help review a contract and find out the sentences that can cause conflicts in the future. These sentences should get rectified before any party signs the agreement.

No Blank Spaces

Recently many businesses are using contract templates for drafting a contract. This type of drafting saves a lot of time and makes the process simpler. But contracts that are drafted using templates require special consideration during the reviewing process. Because these types of contracts contain many blank spaces, it is the reviewer's responsibility to fill in these blank spaces or remove them from the contract before they get signed by any parties. Failing to fill up or remove the blank spaces in the agreement can lead to big business troubles. The consequences that the business will face will be costly. Therefore, it is essential to remove those blank spaces.

You might be interested in: DO NEWSPAPER ADS, CATALOGUES, ETC. CONSTITUTE AS AN OFFER?​​​​​​​

Default Terms

Sometimes, one of the parties in the contract doesn't fulfil the terms of the agreement leading to a breach of contract. So, before agreeing, every business must check the clauses that are there for breaching that agreement. Clauses for the breach of contract are an important section of the agreement and should get reviewed properly. The business should know the consequence it has to face if it doesn't deliver the terms of the contract before the expiry. In contrast, the business should also know its options if the other party performs a contract breach. This will help the business take the right actions against the party, not delivering the contract's terms.

Important Dates and Deadlines

The management will analyze the operations of its business to decide whether to sign the contract or not. The business should review the important dates and deadlines of the agreement before signing it. The business should then check that these agreement dates are not clashing with the existing dates of other contracts. The business should also be confident about its efficiency and deliver the contract terms before the expiry. All of this is done after reviewing the dates and deadline section of the contract. If the business ignores this part, it might fail to meet the deadlines, resulting in a breach of contract. Then the business has to face some consequences that will affect its operations. The breach of contract will also affect the brand value and reputation of the business.

Conclusion

Contracts are legal documents which is why, before signing them, every business should review its terms and conditions. Talk with a contract lawyer to ensure you understand every clause and potential implication. This can prevent the business from losing brand value due to a breach of contract. A good and efficient business will always devote some time to review the contract properly to have a clear and accurate agreement

Found this interesting? Find more such information packed legal articles on Rest The Case and upgrade your legal knowledge by a notch.

Author: Shradha Kabra