Negotiate and draft clear and concise commercial agreements that meet the challenges of today’s commercial environment.
Business is founded on the crystallisation of the terms of a deal and clarity and fair construction are the key to a successful commercial agreement. Without a clear agreement, commercial and legal disputes are likely and unclear agreements are one of the largest causes of costly commercial litigation.
With this in mind, Mark Weston and Falconbury have developed this modular and comprehensive multi-part programme that focuses on delivering practical and applied training of the key drafting skills needed to create transparent and direct contracts that deliver on a legal and commercial level. Each section of the course builds on the section before.
Part One: Drafting, Structure, Interpretation and Formation of Contracts focuses on developing a robust structure and formation to your contracts and expanding your drafting skills to deliver concise and watertight agreements. It will also explain the fundamentals of how contracts are interpreted.
Part Two: Precise and Careful Drafting looks in more detail at the more complex clauses and how they can be drafted and applied to leverage commercial value and manage legal risk.
By attending this programme you will:
- Examine assignment and novation to ensure you are suitably protected in the case of transfer or sale of rights
- Consider the purpose and effect of typical boilerplate clauses and how you can leverage value for your organisation through clearer drafting
- Get-to-grips with payments and interest terms to understand how penalties can be applied
- Expand your knowledge of the risk of drafting a contract without a confidentiality clause
- Understand the risks that can be created through poor drafting in practical exercises under the guidance of the expert
- Discuss any disputes or issues you are facing with colleagues from other organisations to gain new ideas and perspectives
- Understand the pitfalls and pluses to applying an effective standard structure and format to every contract
- Master practical drafting techniques to write concise and effective agreements
- Examine special contractual arrangements and letters of intent
- Learn how to interpret variations and time of essence clauses
- Clarify the distinction between ‘best endeavours’ and ‘reasonable endeavours’ – essential terminology in commercial contracts
- Get up-to-date with the use and drafting of contractual warranties and indemnities
- Understand the effect of exclusion and limitation clauses, and how they can be used to manage your exposure
Practical interactive learning style
This workshop-style programme has been designed to offer a practical solution to your drafting challenges. Throughout the programme the expert presenter will use a balanced mix of theory, group exercises, discussion, sample clauses and case studies to provide you with a comprehensive portfolio of practical tips and techniques to draft contracts which meet your commercial objectives as well as ensuring that there are no ‘surprises’ further on.
Please note: When attending the online version of this course, participants are required to join with the ability to turn on their cameras. This is an essential requirement in order to fully participate in the training course due to the interactive nature of the programme.
Certifications:
- CPD: 18 hours for your records
- Certificate of completion
Course Content
Day 1
Course Provider
Mark Weston ,
Hill Dickinson LLPMark Weston has run his own law firm, Weston Legal, since 1 January 2024. He is also a consultant at Hill Dickinson LLP where he joined in February 2016 as a partner and Head of its Commercial, TMT & IP Practice. Before that, he was a partner and Head of the Commercial/IP/IT Team at Matthew Arnold & Baldwin LLP and before that, he spent several years at Baker & McKenzie in London and Chicago and has also previously been seconded to Hewlett Packard and other technology businesses. He changed role to become a consultant in Hill Dickinson’s London office in January 2024.
Expertise: Mark’s practice covers both non-contentious and contentious matters in all areas of commercial law, intellectual property law, information technology law, Internet, electronic commerce and on-line services law. He specialises in commercial and Tech issues. Mark is used as a ‘trusted adviser’ by many clients in all sorts of businesses and often acts as ‘private practice in-house counsel’ for many clients. He specialises in tech and internet businesses.
Clients: Just some of Mark’s more well-known clients include Elstree Film Studios, RTL Group S.A., Sykes Cottages, Retailcorp Brands LLC, The Gulf Marketing Group, Moneynetint Limited and the BBC.
Some detail: Mark has extensive experience in advising clients on all manner of commercial matters (such as business planning and solutions, franchising, distribution, agency and marketing) through branding and intellectual property exploitation and licensing, to advice and documentation regarding hardware and software issues (such as development, licensing, maintenance and distribution, SaaS and cloud, Internet transactional solutioning, B2B, B2C and B2G electronic commerce, S-commerce and M-Commerce, social media, outsourcing, facilities management, procurement, IT policies, data protection (privacy), GDPR and freedom of information issues as well as artificial intelligence (AI)). He has a particular expertise in new digital business and revenue streams. He is also experienced in dealing with software disputes and IT litigation. The increasingly extensive media side of his practice relates primarily to publishing (both real world and digital content), to games and gaming platforms (and particularly transmedia technologies), advising companies about their advertising onscreen, online and in print and managing their public communications strategies generally (dealing with the CMA and ASA in the process) – and also a smattering of television, film and music exploitation. Recently he has been very active in AI advice.
More unusual:
Mark has previously spent several months on secondment to Hewlett Packard and he has also been seconded to assist in the legal problems arising in new technology companies such as Symbian. From 2000 to 2001, Mark was resident in the Chicago office of Baker & McKenzie advising US clients on European and UK aspects of IT and electronic commerce law and practice.
Mark is the author of the Legal Practice Companion, a parallel text book used at several law schools, the editor of the IP and Media Law Companion as well as the rest of the Companion series of books published by Bloomsbury Professional, Tottels, Cavendish Publishing and Oxford University Press. He has noted numerous reports for the IT Law Reports and is widely published in Computing, Computers & Law, Computer Law & Security Report, IT Law Today, Intellectual Property World, Solicitors Journal and many other journals both online and offline. Mark has also authored articles syndicated in the national and trade press and is regularly quoted in national newspapers and is heard on radio as an expert in his fields. Mark is the author of the Business Names on the Internet chapter in the PLC Ecommerce Manual as well as numerous other articles on various Commercial & IT law topics.
Mark lectures regularly on all Commercial, IP and IT law topics, including at the IBC IT ‘Summer School’ Programme in Cambridge, England; the Falconbury and MBL two-day and three-day Commercial Contracts seminars (run several times a year) and IT Contracts seminars (run three times a year) in London; and he has previously lectured at the Annual On-line & Internet Commerce Law Institute seminar in Chicago and tutored at University College London. He also runs a programme of bespoke training schemes on commercial law, IP law, IT law, AI law and data law as well as soft skills programmes such as negotiation skills and presentation skills.
Finally, you may have seen that Mark likes blogging and writing books, which are available at all good bookshops! He also appears regularly on BBC1 (usually providing advice on-screen to BBC Watchdog) and also on Sky News as a legal commentator, as well as trying to avoid the huge quantity of pink powder the TV make-up girls want to apply to his increasingly receding hairline.
Who Should Attend
This programme has been specifically designed for those who want to enhance their practical drafting skills and who have a knowledge of the law, including:
- In-house lawyers
- Private practice lawyers
- Commercial and contracts directors and managers
- Procurement personnel
- Compliance officers
- Company secretaries
