Course overview
Commercial contracts are legal tools that secure your organisation’s interests - if they are drafted well. Skilled drafters can structure terms that optimise outcomes - such as payment terms, IP ownership, termination triggers and limitations of liability - while protecting against adverse conditions.
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.
In today’s fast-paced commercial landscape, lawyers and contract professionals must be equipped to draft, negotiate and interpret contracts with precision, clarity and strategic foresight. This three-day practical training course provides a comprehensive and immersive experience for those seeking to strengthen their skills in drafting robust, enforceable contracts and interpreting key provisions with commercial and legal insight.
Through a combination of in-depth instruction, practical drafting exercises, interactive case studies and peer discussion, delegates will gain the tools to manage risk, enhance legal certainty and add strategic value through well-structured agreements.
This 3-day modular, comprehensive training course focuses on delivering practical and applied learning 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 so all those dealing with contracts can gain the skills to draft watertight clauses, navigate complexity and proactively manage risk for the benefit of their organisations.
Key topics covered include:
- The legal principles behind contract interpretation
- Differences between civil and common law drafting styles
- How ambiguity is treated by courts and the impact on enforcement
- Classical and modern approaches to contract formation, including key case law
- Avoiding unintended contract formation during negotiation
- Precise language for key clauses: shall, will, endeavours, warranties, representations, and indemnities
- Strategic drafting techniques for limitation and exclusion of liability clauses
- Risk allocation spectrum and how to reflect this in your drafting
- Transfer of contractual rights: assignment, novation and third-party rights
- Governing law, jurisdiction, and dispute resolution clauses with cross-border implications
- Boilerplate clauses using a functional methodology
- Entire agreement clauses and their role in contract enforcement
- The role of interest, payment terms and remedies in balancing contract performance
Practical interactive learning style
Throughout the training course the expert presenter will use a balanced mix of theory, practical group exercises, discussion sessions, 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, and give you practical solutions to your drafting challenges.
Please note: When attending the online version of this training 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.
Presenter's firm
Weston Legal is a leading specialist boutique firm specialising in Commercial law, Technology law, Media law, Intellectual Property law, Data law and Regulatory law and practice. From its founding, the firm has always committed to provide a fast and efficient service wherever its clients operate. As its business has grown and diversified, it has recognised the strength and importance of the principles held by its people; putting clients first and operating as one team to realise its goals and share its success. These principles have formed the foundation of its culture and the way its lawyers interact with one another and the firm’s clients. They are what distinguish it and are vital to its future.
Mark also operates as a leading consultant to Hill Dickinson LLP, a leading and award-winning international law firm with offices in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Piraeus, Singapore, Monaco and Hong Kong. As a full service law firm, it delivers advice and strategic guidance spanning the full legal spectrum from non-contentious advisory and transactional work, to all forms of dispute resolution. The firm is on the panel of a number of national and international organisations and regularly competes against many of the City firms. In recent months, they have been able to win a number of panel reviews against City firms.
CPD Hours: 18
Course Content
- Day 1
- Contract interpretation
- How do you form a contract? (Part 1)
- Commercial contract format and structure
- Ancillary documentation and contracts
- Terms: implied, express and standard (Part 1)
- Terms: implied, express and standard (Part 2)
- Drafting techniques: the easy but not well-known stuff
- Day 2
- Drafting techniques: The Hard Stuff (part 1)
- Drafting techniques: The Hard Stuff (part 2)
- Exclusion and limitation clauses (Part 1)
- Exclusion and limitation clauses (Part 2)
- Introduction to boilerplate
- Transferring contractual rights and obligations
- Day 3
- Welded boiler plate: 5 types of clause
- Payment remedies
- (1) Entire Agreement clauses (2) Governing law, jurisdiction and dispute resolution clauses
- Exercises
Speakers
Mark Weston
Mark Weston has runhis own law firm, Weston Legal, since 1 January 2024.He is alsoa 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 andis 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.
