Written By:

Siobhan Williams

Senior Associate

Darwin Gray

 

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Entering a new year gives us the opportunity to reflect and prepare for the year ahead. When it comes to your business contracts, Darwin Gray’s commercial law experts recommend that you consider the key financial and commercial issues in relation to any contracts that you propose to enter into in 2023, or that you may already be a party to.

What should I be thinking about?

With rising costs of materials, labour and utilities, it is important when entering into long-term contracts that you attempt to build in some flexibility should costs continue to rise. You may also need to cater for the possibility of not being able to obtain certain raw materials that you require for fulfilment purposes.

In addition to considering relevant commercial issues, it is usually worth obtaining legal advice when considering entering into long-term contracts, particularly in the current economic climate.

You should spend some time considering what commercial risks your business is likely to have to face in relation to its long-term contractual commitments.

What about existing contracts?

It may be that you already have long-term contractual commitments and that there is little scope for renegotiating the terms. However, it is still worth reviewing these contacts because there might be helpful terms tucked away in there that might be useful to you. The sooner that you check your contracts the better as some provisions contain notice provisions to enable you to rely on them.

Alternatively, even if there is nothing helpful contained within an existing contract, if you need to start negotiations with your customer or supplier, generally speaking, the sooner that you do this the better.

If you have not yet entered into a contract, there is always much more scope for adding in some sort of “saving provision” in the event that you face difficulties going forward.

From an internal perspective, you should also involve relevant employees in this conversation e.g. sales staff and contract managers, just to make sure that everyone is aware of what you are trying to achieve.

If you would like some legal advice with writing or negotiating commercial contracts, contact Siobhan Williams on 02920829124 | [email protected] for a free initial discussion.