Contract forms
Choose one of the following customizable contract forms:
(More are in development)
Confidentiality agreements
- Fairway version (short): A bare-bones nondisclosure agreement (NDA) that tries to go ‘down the middle.’
- Fairway version (longer): A longer NDA that includes clauses that one side or another often wants, and that (usually) don’t hurt the other side.
- Leans toward disclosing party: The pre-sets in this version include a number of clauses often asked for by ‘800-pound-gorilla’ parties who will be disclosing their confidential information.
- Leans toward receiving party: Same as above, except that here the ‘gorilla’ party is the one that will be receiving confidential information.
Services agreements
- Fairway version (short): A bare-bones master services agreement that tries to stay ‘down the middle.’ It allows the parties to use the same agreement for multiple statements of work (SOWs).
- Fairway version (longer): A longer down-the-middle version.
- Leans toward customer: Sometimes a customer is in a position of strength with respect to its services provider and wants to take advantage of its bargaining power. The pre-sets in this version include a number of clauses that such a customer might request.
- Leans toward provider: Same as above, except that here it’s the services provider that has the bargaining power.
Compendium - free for use in your contracts
The clause compendium is an alphabetically-arranged compilation of contract clauses that you’re free to copy and use in your own actual contract drafts; see the Pricing & licensing page for more details.
‘Fairway’ forms vs. biased ones
As you can see from the above, the contract forms here can be divided into two basic categories:
• Some are biased versions with pre-checked clauses that normally would be preferred by one side or another, e.g., the vendor or the customer. Biased versions, however, usually require extensive legal review and markup by the other side, and then negotiation of the points of disagreement, all of which takes time, which in most businesses is a scarce commodity.
• Other contract forms here are ‘fairway’ versions, where the pre-checked clauses are often agreed to by both sides. My experience has been that using a fairway form generally gets you to signature more quickly and helps foster a good business relationship.
(The ‘fairway’ term comes from golf: I’m not a golfer, but it seems obvious that it’s easier to get to the green — pun intended — when you stay on the fairway. )