“Drafting” refers to assisting in the preparation and amendment of any company document, whether contracts, codes of conduct, company statutes or procedural documents.
Writing effectively requires the combination of three prerequisites:
- an understanding of the nature and complexity of the proposed transaction;
- a specific competence, at the limit between mastery of the working language, common sense and knowledge of the law (taking into account the sector of activity) and the contractual environment of the company. This competence must be exercised to develop and maintain;
- the time and availability necessary for drafting and negotiation.
When to seek an external legal advice ?
Depending on their size, the nature of the transactions, or simply the circumstances, companies miss one or more elements temporarily or permanently.
In all these cases, the intervention of external legal counsel is justified. A law firm may have an advantage over an external legal advisor as they would be more attentive to the practical risks arising from problems of non-performance of a contract.
In these times of living, the demand from companies varies. More and more companies want to take a more active part in the drafting of their contracts. This is a happy circumstance where the above prerequisites are met, as it brings knowledge of the company and the sector to the contract development process.
Two technological developments reinforce this trend: on one hand, many templates are available on the Internet. On the other hand, because part of the contract drafting work can also be automated.
E²’s service offering
E².law welcomes the fact that legal information has become more broadly available, as this allows lawyers to focus on transactions with higher added value. In addition, a more advanced involvement of the company is a positive factor because it responds to the dual need (i) to include and involve local actors in the drafting of contracts; (ii) to limit external legal costs to interventions with added value. However, there is a problem that can easily be solved by the intervention of a law firm: this increase in the number of legal documents on the web creates a new risk for companies that the documents chosen are not suitable, given that there is no such thing as a completely standard contract.
Subscribing to market developments, E².law has therefore developed two tailor-made service levels, corresponding to the two main types of situations:
- a “complete service” for cases where the prerequisites are not met, and for larger missions, at the company level (typically, contractual structuring, assistance in the acquisition of a company, definition of a first standard model)
- a “mixed service” based partly on the verification of prerequisites, coaching of the company’s teams and occasional interventions. In this context, we provide our clients on request with the contract templates that we recommend for a given situation or give an opinion on the contract template provided by it. The specific interventions consist in the revision of the amendments made by the company, with annotations or direct corrections if necessary.
