[EP 016] Streamlining the Contracting Process
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Pruébalo Gratis?In the last episode, I talked about issues caused by a lack of sufficient detail in contracts or even worse, a failure to have a finalised contract before performance starts (which happens more often than you might think).The problem is that without a contract or without clear terms in the contract, there is risk of ambiguity. Where there is ambiguity, there is risk of argument. Where there is argument, there is often wasted amounts of time, money and other resources.?Links Speak to a lawyer about an issue you are facing nowLeave us a message with a legal issue that you want us to cover on the podcast Thrive Leads Shortcode could not be rendered, please check it in Thrive Leads Section! Episode Highlights00:37 Relevance of streamlining01:59 Three main issues05:07 Ways to streamline the contracting process05:43 Chunking time06:25 Starting a list07:10 Creating templates07:50 Setting up a process09:28 Using checklists10:07 Version control your templates12:35 Common objections15:12 Action steps?In the last episode, I talked about issues caused by a lack of sufficient detail in contracts or even worse, a failure to have a finalised contract before performance starts (which happens more often than you might think).The problem is that without a contract or without clear terms in the contract, there is risk of ambiguity. Where there is ambiguity, there is risk of argument. Where there is argument, there is often wasted amounts of time, money and other resources.The aim here is for us to set up systems in place to ensure that we don't get to the position where we are wasting time and money dealing with arguments that could have been prevented by having the right systems in place, or contracts in place, or terms in place from the beginning.But first we need to have a look at the cause of the issue. Why are contracts finalised before performance under them starts? Why are they lacking in appropriate detail such that they cause ambiguity and argument?3 Main IssuesI often speak about these issues, either with clients or with people who attend seminars that I speak at. No matter what the size of the organisation, whether it's an SME or one of Australia's leading organisations or multinationals, it all often comes back to three main issues.1. Lack of timeNo matter what the size of an organisation, everyone within every organisation that I deal with is always busy and often contracts are just one of those things that are less enjoyable and seen as less important than many of the other tasks that people perform on a daily basis.2. Lack of risk considerationThis sort of ties into the issue of lack of time. Not only is everyone so busy, often they're too busy to sit down and think about what the real risks are in each of the transactions that they're dealing with on a contractual basis.3. Lack of understandingA lack of understanding about how to cover those things in a contract or even what should be covered in a contract; Or how to cover a breach or if something that you have agreed on doesn't occur the way you want it to occur. What I mean by this is often people don't understand that if they want a right of termination for something not happening in the contract, they need to specifically build in this right for themselves; Or if they want a right of redress in relation to service or quality or other elements of a contract not being met, they need to be really clear about what the expectation is for what performance looks like under those elements. This runs both ways, whether you're dealing with a supplier to your organisation or your customers.In each of these situations it's extremely important that people dealing with contracts understand the elements of the contract that are relevant to the contracting situation and know what to include in those contracts to ensure the best chance of parties achieving what each of them are meant to achieve under the contract.Unfortunately, managing risk is often an afterthought that only raises its head only when a problem occurs. People also forget about the other aspect of having contracts in place which is obviously about the management of risks but also about underpinning what success looks like between the parties and setting up the right atmosphere to encourage success because it's been clear to both parties what success looks like.Getting around these problem areasHow long can an organisation get around these three issues? The answer is in creating a process to streamline the way your business or your department deals with contracts. How can you do this?Chunking TimeOne way to start in this area is to set aside some time specifically for this area. I'm reading a great book at the moment about deep work, which I might talk about in another episode of this podcast. Essentially, the concept is that for important tasks, (and certainly overlooking the contract process within your organisation or department is a deeply important task) needs to be given an allocated time away from distractions.You need to allocate whoever it is in your organisation who's going to be looking at this issue. Give them a mandate to spend a particular period of time looking at the process of contracts within your organisation.Start a listOnce someone has the time, the task are:Firstly, reflect back over the last year (at least the last year or maybe even further than that) and think about the main contracts in your area of the business or the business as a whole. If you're looking at this process on behalf of your business as a whole, reflect back on what the main contracts have been both with suppliers and with clients (or depending on your organisation, it may just be one or the other) or any other third parties.Next, list down types of relationships and any sorts of issues that have occurred along the way with any of these relationships in the past. Of course, warding off areas where you've had issues in the past is a great start to ensuring that you don't have those again in the future.Create templatesFor each of these main areas, you should consider putting together a suite of templates for your organisation. On the other hand, if you usually have to sign another party’s contract, (say for example, you deal with counter parties who are often larger than your organisation or if you deal with specialised types of contracts, it makes more sense for you to be executing the contracts or dealing with the contracts that come in from your counter-party) you should at least be creating checklists of your preferred positions in relation to dealing with the risks that relate to the areas and obligations.Set up a processThe next area you should be thinking about is creating a process for whoever is in your organisation reviewing the contracts that come in. Ideally, you should be choosing one person in your department or your organisation to be the main conduit of contracts.Even if you're generally using outsourced legal, (which is a great idea in these situations particularly if you're dealing with contracts that have a real element of potential risk or potential for argument in the future involved) it is best to have one person in the organisation or a number of people in the organisation who are familiar with your process of dealing with these contracts.Choose a person or number of people within the organisation to deal with the contracts. Then get them trained up and familiar with the terms of what each common types of clauses within these agreements that you regularly deal with actually mean. You can get them trained up by sending them on formal courses to understand contract terms a bit more. You could also get them trained up by getting them to listen to all of our podcast episodes here at Talking Law for understanding the types of terms and issues that deal with contracts. You can likewise have this by developing a close relationship with your lawyers so that as you work together with them through each contract, you get a feel for where the areas of significance appear in each of these contracts.Have a checklistOnce you've done that, you should be creating a checklist for the major things to look out for. For example, as I said this might be areas in the past that have created issue. You might also want to get some advice from other people in the industry or legal advisers. You can also brainstorm with other people in your team or your organisation about what the risks are in the types of situations that you've identified as the main contracting relationships.Version control your templatesThen the last thing to do is to ensure that these templates and checklists are stored in a way that’s easy to access in the future, together with a process that you've created internally to know if there are changes made to the document.A few small changes over time, made by different people within the organisation can do a lot of harm to a template. I've seen lots of templates come back to us so different from the templates we had initially created that often they completely lose their legal effect.It's really important to ensure that you have version control over the templates that are saved within your organisation system and that you have a way to deal with any changes made to those templates so that these changes are not impacting the legal effect of the templates themselves.The last area to think about is how the individual working through the template or checklist is going to understand whether or not the risks have been covered off within the contract. I'd certainly recommend that whoever's dealing with your contracts within your organisation have enough understanding about how to tie in other elements of a contract (e.g. the statement of works or the service level agreements that go with them or things set out in the schedule) and how to tie those sorts of things back in to the contract if performance of any of those areas is critical or has any importance to the contract as a whole.Common objectionsSome of the objections that I often see or hear in relation to going through this process of getting a clearly defined way of dealing with contracts within an organisation are useful for me to deal with today.“We have good relationships so we don’t really need one.”One of those objections I get is people saying to me that they've got a close relationship with all of their suppliers or all of their customers so they don't think problems are likely to occur or things are likely to get nasty. But it's important to understand that things can change. Management can change. Businesses can be sold. Personnel within businesses can change.More than that, contracts are a way of helping you cover off the detail that you might not always think to create. Contracts help to set up a relationship. They help to set up a relationship that provides you with that stability if things change. They also sit there to help in situations where even if people don't change memories can dim. Sometimes the issue might be that conversations have not been had about some of these important points. The contract is sitting there to set up a relationship between each of the parties to withstand changes in personnel, changes in business culture, or the diming of memory with time.“We’re just too busy.”[00:14:01] Another argument that I often hear is that people don't have time. They don't have time to go back and set up a proper process for dealing with their contracts or a proper suite of templates and a proper checklist of things to be considering.My argument is that disagreements take up a lot more time than you often realize - a lot more time, a lot more money, a lot more resources. So it really makes sense to ward these issues off the past and to set time out right at the beginning for you to go through each of these areas that are important to set up so that you can get a suite of templates set up, your checklist set up and your process set up right from the beginning to help you get into the situation where you avoid arguments that are time sapping and resource sapping.“We don’t have anyone who can do it.”[00:14:48] And then the final objection that I hear over time is that organisations don't have someone who is available who understands in an appropriate way the things that they're dealing with in a contract and that's totally understandable. In that instance, you should be outsourcing it. We work in this way with lots of our clients.Action StepsThat brings us to the four main action steps coming out of today's podcast.1) Appoint someone in your organisation or department with primary responsibility for the contracts or dealing with an outsourced legal in relation to each of these contracts. Make sure they are trained up either using formal training or by having that close relationship with your legal advisers to help them understand what the important elements in each contract and negotiation are from a contractual perspective. 2) Brainstorm the risks in each usual contracting relationship so you've got a clear understanding at the outset and so you don't have to do this each time from scratch.3) Create a checklist for the major things to look out for in each of these types of contracts.4) Create templates that are often used for these types of contracts so that you can have a template from your suite of templates for you to draw from and even if you're not able to use your contract with your contracting customer or supplier at least you'll have your contract to compare back to or to send through to your lawyers as a check in relation to the types of risk positions that you usually adopt in relation to each of these relationships.Just a quick recap. In this episode we talked about: Ways to streamline the contracting process Relevance of streamlining the contract processImportance of understanding the major elements in a contractImportance for the person who is going to be dealing with your contracts to have some understanding (or at least have someone that they can rely on to give them understanding) of the major elements of each of these contractsAction steps about appointing someone in your organisation to deal with the contracts, brainstorming the risks in each of the usual contracting relationships, and using checklists and templates. If you'd like more information about this topic head over to our website at talkinglaw.com.au where you’ll be able to download a transcript of this podcast episode if you want to read it in more detail.You'll also find details there of how to contact our lawyers at Aspect Legal if you'd like help with any of the items we covered today. And finally, if you enjoyed what you heard today, please pop over to iTunes and leave us review. Thanks again for listening in and see you next time!? 5 SPEAK TO A LAWYER NOW ABOUT AN ISSUE YOU ARE FACING One common legal issue businesses face are problems that crop up from time to time with clients. This can lead to clients paying slowly, or not at all, costly and time consuming disputes, and brand damage. In this episode we discuss how having the right approach from the start can help you to avoid most of these problems. Links Download a PDF transcript of this episode Download a Cheatsheet Speak to a lawyer about an issue you are facing now Leave us a message with a legal issue that you want us to cover on the podcast Episode Highlights 1:40 Five customer engagement issues you need to look into 5:11 Setting up the right terms and conditions 6:00 What should you include in your terms and conditions 6:38 Clarity on responsibility of both parties 7:49 Clarify who owns the intellectual property 9:06 Payment terms – incentives and penalties 9:57 Liability clauses you need to include 13:50 Writing your terms and conditions in plain English 14:55 Fulfill your own terms – and be proactive 16:24 Consider the cost of inaction 17:31 Four action steps you need to take Full Transcript Today we’re talking about the ways that you can set up your client relationships right from the start. So, why is this important? One common legal issue that businesses face, are problems that crop up from time to time with clients or customers, depending on which language you use. That might reflect itself in: Clients being slow payers; Clients not paying at all; Clients that raise issues with the goods or services you’ve provided; Clients that try to terminate contracts with you before they’ve come to an end; or, at the worst, Situations where clients try to make you liable for the loss they have suffered, that potentially could even be greater than the value of the goods or services that you’ve provided to them. The most common of all of these that I see are payment related issues and disputes about the goods or services that have been provided. Although, I have to note that when disputes occur, they often directly link also to slow non-payment as well because when customers aren’t happy they generally stop paying, so all of these problems can be interlinked. In most cases these sorts of issues essentially come down to a failure in the process of the original engagement with the customer and the systems you set up right from the start to support them and deal with any issues as they occur. For example, generally I see these issues arising from one of these particular situations: Terms and conditions or terms of sale that have been used in the beginning that haven’t had the right clauses included or, they’ve had the clauses but they’ve been set up in a way that means that they don’t have the effect that they were meant to have; There were no Terms and Conditions right from the beginning of the relationship with the client; The Terms and Conditions were not read and understood by the client; There was a lack of communication in any engagement process and throughout the relationship, which then allowed issues to bubble up to the surface; or, finally There was a lack of systems established to monitor the relationship and deal with any issues as they occurred. Today we’re going to talk about each of these five areas. Essentially, having terms and conditions in place to begin with that include the right clauses, communicated in a way that your customers understand; ensuring that your communications throughout the process of delivering the goods and services are clear, and that your systems support the rights and obligations that arise through your terms and conditions document. What does that mean? Essentially, that you have systems in place to make sure that you are providing what you have said to your client that you will provide. Now, if all of these things are ticked off, I think you’re fine and that you’re in a situation where it is extremely unlikely that you will have customer issues going forward. An example of this having been done really well is a recent case that I worked on where we were able to get a $250,000 win for one of our clients, on the basis of really tight wording that we used in their contract initially and a good negotiation strategy in dealing with the contractor’s view. That’s an example of where terms and conditions have really correctly and helpfully given you a basis that you can launch from if a dispute does occur in the future even though, if done well, you’re also highly reducing the likelihood of dispute. But, on the flip side, we’ve had many instances where businesses have signed up clients for lots of projects who have then pulled out half way through and refused to pay for the work done, or clients who have come in to see us who have lost tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars when their clients refused to pay, because an argument erupted during the period of the provision of the goods or services. All of those usually link back to some issue in one of those five areas that I mentioned a few minutes ago. What processes should you have in place? Today, we’re going to start discussing what processes you need to have in place to ward off issues from the start. I’ve also created an action guide for you as a checklist that you can use to guide you through all of these areas because we’re going to be talking about a lot today, obviously too much for you to take note of while you’re listening to a podcast. So, to make it really easy, I’ve made a checklist available for you related to this episode at talkinglaw.com.au or you can access it via the website of my commercial legal practice at aspectlegal.com.au Okay, so let’s launch into what you need to do to have the right terms and conditions in place. The concept of having the right terms and conditions in place comes from, in essence, the concept that a contract is imperative. A contract sets the relationships between parties; It sets the expectations between the parties; and It’s not a document that describes simply what you will and won’t provide but also what you expect of your clients. When done well, it helps to ward off arguments with clients because, essentially, arguments only occur when both parties think they’re right. Thatmeans arguments can only occur when something hasn’t been clear, so our task is ensuring that we have documents that make all of these areas really clear that help to protect you from open liability and that helps you to set up the right expectations from the start. Okay, so what should you be including in these documents? I’ll go through a bit of a checklist of the sorts of things that you should be considering including, but obviously I need to add a caveat that each business is different so you need to ensure that your terms and conditions are a reflection of your business not a reflection of someone else’s. This is why copying and pasting someone else’s terms and conditions doesn’t really work because they’re not your business they’re a different business. So if you have copied and pasted a set of terms and conditions it’s important that you go back and that you review them thoroughly in light of the things that I’m about to talk about now. Alright, so what should you be including in these documents? Clarity on What You’re Responsible for Firstly, clarity about what you will do and what you’re responsible for. This is, essentially, the crux of the documents. This is something that you should sit down and think about and understand first before you even get started in working out whether or not your current terms are appropriate for you where you are now. Other areas that you need to think about clarity are on payment terms, which sounds obvious but it’s so often not dealt with clearly enough in the agreement and it’s super important. You need to be clear on what the client’s obligations are and what you need from – if you’re going to require anything from them – to be able to deliver your goods or services. These issues are really important and often forgotten. If you need something from them, you need to be clear about this in your terms. If they’re providing things to you then you need to ensure that you get protection in relation to any information they give you. For example, sometimes this might look like licenses in relation to your use of those things. You need to be clear that intellectual property (I’m not going to go into this in too much detail, we’ll do it in some future episodes) but essentially intellectual property you need to think about a few different things. Clarify who owns the intellectual property Number one, if intellectual property ownership is important, you need to make it clear about who will own the intellectual property and, if intellectual property will pass over at some point, you need to be clear about when that will pass over. For example, very simply, many documents just simply say intellectual property will pass to the client but that isn’t making clear that you won’t pass to the client until the client has actually made payment. So that’s an important thing to include. Also, bear in mind that sometimes, intellectual property clauses need specific caveats. So, that means if you are providing services or goods to your client that are based on some things that you then use with other clients as well, you just need to make sure you’re clear about what you’re actually handing over in any intellectual property clauses. You don’t want clauses that essentially say all intellectual property will pass to the client, because that’s not really reflective of what’s happening and it might restrain you from being able to use that base intellectual property with other clients moving on into the future. Or, maybe you don’t even own all of the intellectual property yourself, say for example, if you’re licensing images from someone else and you’re providing graphic design or web development services you need to make sure that you’re clear that that intellectual property is not something that you can ever pass over in intellectual property form. The next area that you might want to consider building into terms and conditions documents are clauses that deal with slow payment. You might, for example, want to include some sort of incentive for your clients not to want to be a late payer. For example, Interest. Even if you won’t be applying the interest, or administration fees, or whatever else you’re calling fees that you might threaten to apply to slow payers, at least if you have clauses that allow you to charge these figures, it gives you something that you can threaten to apply if you have slow payers. It gives you some carrot to encourage them to pay in a timely manner. Slow payment is a whole different topic which I will deal with in another episode in the future, but for now it’s enough to say that it’s important that when you’re reviewing your terms and conditions, you have the appropriate clauses to deal with slow payment. You also need to make sure you have the ability to on-charge your customers for any enforcement cost and you need to make sure you have the right protection against liability and that in this you don’t over shoot the mark. Quite often I see liability clauses that really aren’t appropriate for the situation that they’ve been used in and that really overshoot the mark. The problem with that is that there’s various legislation around that might create an issue or the situation in which that clause then becomes invalid and you, therefore, don’t have any protection from that liability clause at all. So, it’s really important when you have liability clauses – and when I say liability, I mean clauses that might be under the heading of indemnities or waivers or release clauses or there might be exclusion of warranty or exclusion of liability clauses, anything with that sort of heading – you need to make sure you understand what those clauses actually mean and make sure that they are appropriate for the situation of your relationship with your client. I often find that people look at these clauses and have no idea what they mean and then decide, therefore, just to ignore them. But, that’s completely the wrong approach because if you do that and the clauses are incorrect for your business, then you don’t want to be finding that out later when it’s too late. So, it’s really important that you understand what each of these clauses mean in your business and that they are appropriate for your business. And then finally, you should also be thinking about how it is that you link this document – being your standard terms and conditions document – together with the documents where you provide the specifics of what you’re providing your customer. Quite often businesses would use separate documents like, for example, proposals or estimates or schedules, or a statement of works where they set out the details of what it is that they‘re going to be providing to the customer, that isn’t something that’s included in the general terms and conditions. It’s really important that each of these documents are referred to correctly in the terms and conditions and that you work out how they are going to interact together, and that you’ve also worked out a framework for what needs to be included in these documents that are your proposals or estimates, to make sure you’ve covered off the detail that you need to, to link it up correctly with your terms and conditions. Alright, and the list goes on but these are the major issues that you should be considering. But it’s not enough to just have your terms and conditions document in place, you also need to make sure they’re up to date with current legislation – and that current legislation, I must say, is changing all the time, so you really need to have your agreement updated at least once a year to ensure that you’re on top of that changing legislation and on top of your changing business phase. Quite often your business will be in a completely different stage now than it was one year before or one year in the future, and therefore, your terms and conditions need to accurately reflect where your business currently is now and the way you interact with your clients now; not how you did in the past or how you’re going to do it in the future. There’s no point having terms if they aren’t understood by you and if they aren’t understood by your clients. I’m often surprised by how often people in the business don’t know or don’t understand what’s in their terms. It’s not just the owners and managers that need to understand agreements that regulate your relationship with your clients, but anyone who is part of the initial sale or who is client facing throughout the relationship. So how do we do this? How do we create the situation where we have documents that are understood by you and understood by your clients? Because, let’s face it, I think the reality is, that many of us click away terms and conditions without ever reading them and I think that’s the reality that many of us have businesses or work in businesses where we deal with terms and conditions that we don’t even understand ourselves. So where do we start with all of this? Writing your terms and conditions in plain English The first thing is we need to have our own client agreements that are written in plain English and that are easy to understand and that aren’t overly long or overly complicated, because the longer they are the less likely that any of the terms are going to be read or considered carefully by the very people that you want to communicate these to. So, if we think about our agreements, essentially it’s a checklist for us. It’s a way for us to think about the important elements of our relationship with our clients, and that essentially means that we need these documents to be something that we understand and that they understand. Another important thing to do then is also to review your terms and conditions and to work out what are the really important clauses to you and restate this to your clients in a really clear and succinct way in a separate communication to your client. A nice way to do that, for example, might be to send out a welcome pack, or onboarding documents, or whatever you call them. Firstly, as I said you need to understand the documents and then you need to make sure that your clients understand them as well. Then, the next element to consider is whether or not you’re actually complying with the terms yourself, so you need to put the systems in place to make sure you can deliver your services or goods the way you’ve promise them. You need to be rigorous about the standard of products and services you provide and the way in which you provide them, and this is particularly important as you grow because sometimes businesses grow quicker than the systems that are supporting them and the reality is that poor customer service will cost you dearly in the long run. So, if you’re making promises that you’re not going to back up, then you’re going to be creating a difficult contractual situation for yourself, but you’re also going to be creating bad blood with your customers. So, you need to jump on issues quickly. You need to communicate early and this means that you need to have systems in place that can identify the issues before they escalate. And fourthly, make sure your clients don’t slip too far away from the obligations that they have under the contract. This can be a slippery slope. Sometimes, it feels really hard to pull up clients if they are not complying with their end of the bargain, but it’s really important that you reign them in gently at first, but quickly because these sorts of things, as I said, can end up being a slippery slope. So you need to have systems in place that can help you to identify if your client’s aren’t complying with their obligations and you need to ensure that you deal with it as soon as you’ve identified these as an issue. The cost of inaction What if you’re busy and you don’t have time for thinking about your terms of sale and you think people don’t even read them anyway? The thing that I would say to you in this situation, which I completely understand – we’re all busy and, as I said before, certainly there’s the belief that people often don’t read the terms and conditions that you send to them. I think it’s really important that you think about the cost of inaction. So think now about what it would cost you if even just a few clients decided that they didn’t pay. Obviously, this is far, far greater potential cost than the cost of actually sitting down and going through the process properly. What if, on the other hand you get upfront payments or deposits to cover your initial costs so you figure slow payment isn’t relevant? Don’t think you’re immune in this situation. We see lots of instances of customers demanding money back which then puts a strain on the business. But, simple economics aside, remember that client’s that are unhappy can do a lot of harm to your brand, so the concept of proper client engagement is as much about building and protecting your brand it is about legal and financial protection. Four Action Steps for You to Take We’ve talked about what you can include in your terms and conditions, now let’s talk about the Action Steps that you should be following in relation to this whole process, once you’ve got your terms and conditions, to ensure that you’re implementing them in the correct way. And, remember, if you’d like a download of this guide that we’ve gone through today, head over to our show notes at talkinglaw.com.au and download the guide from there. So, your action steps are four to keep it really simple: Firstly, as I said review your terms and conditions of sale. Do you have each of the elements that we’ve discussed above? That’s the first thing; Are they compliant with current legislation? Are they easy to read and understand? Do your customers actually sign them, or do they just a tick a box that you know they’ll never be able to read? Do you understand what’s in your terms and do your staff or to the other staff in your organization understand what’s in your terms? So these are the first things to do in relation to your review of your terms and conditions of sale. Then the second action step, is to think about your process of on boarding. Once you’ve got your terms and conditions right – once you’re confident that they contain all of the right elements and once you’re confident that you have produced them in a way that your clients and your staff will understand them, then now think about on boarding of your clients. If your clients receive your terms and conditions in a tick a box exercise, then I would suggest that you separately send your terms to your clients as part of the onboarding process to give them the opportunity to have a copy of the terms, so that they can have a read through them. Obviously, it won’t be so exciting for them to read through the terms and conditions if they’re long and boring, so this gets back to ensuring that your terms and conditions are easy to read in the first place. And then, in your process of on boarding, the other thing that I recommend is being clear about the items that are important. So, as I said before, restate them in a welcome pack. You can say things like this in a nice way but just make sure you’re communicating it clearly. So we’ve talked about the action steps of reviewing your terms and conditions of sale and thinking about your process of on boarding. The third element in your action step here is to review your systems for complying with your terms. System and compliance reviews Do you measure how you are delivering your goods and services? Do all of your client-facing staff understand the terms and conditions and your obligations and your client’s obligations? Do you pick up your clients if they aren’t complying? Are there review periods in these terms? Think about all of these issues in relation to how you can build systems to ensure that you are complying with the terms. And finally, and this is action step number four, have a process for ensuring that you jump on emerging problems quickly before they gather speed. So that’s it. That’s all I have today to say about this episode so just a quick recap. In this episode we talked about: Ways to set up your client relationships correctly right from the start. If you’d like more information about this topic, as I said, head over to our show notes at talkinglaw.com.au for your free download and through that website, you’ll also be able to get a transcript to this podcast episode if you’d like to hear or read each of these elements in more detail, and there you’ll also find details of how to contact our lawyers at Aspect Legal if you’d like help with any of the items we covered today. We can certainly help guide you through what can be a bit of a complicated process if you’re trying to do it on your own. And finally, if you enjoyed what you heard today, please head over to iTunes and leave us a review. We’d be very grateful and if you’d like us to talk about a particular topic, feel free to head over to our website and leave us a voice message with a particular question or issue that you would like covered. We’d be more than happy to cover any of the questions that you have and certainly I’d really like this podcast episode to be all about what you want to hear about. Ask me what you want to hear about commercial law and business law and I’ll try to cover it in the future. Thanks for listening in to what can sometimes be a dry topic, but I really hope you’ve got some pointers to take away that will help you really super charge those client relationships and help you ward off problems before they occur. The post [EP 016] Streamlining the Contracting Process appeared first on Aspect Legal.
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