3 Most Common Contract Mistakes

So, the first one. We’ve had a client who incorporates his company with a million shares. Which meant that when he brought on a partner and he had a shareholder agreement and he’s there telling this person that his company’s worth a million pounds, it was a bit of a boo boo. Now all that’s gonna do is tell HMRC that you have a company that is worth a million pounds, when actually it’s probably worth f*** all right now.

People either don’t put contracts in place at all, or they beg, borrow, and steal from other people. The problem with this is if you can’t trace where your contracts came from originally and you don’t know if they’ve been professionally drafted, unless you understand every single clause in that contract, you might have duplicate clauses in there, you might have clauses that contradict each other, and should you then ever need to rely on those clauses, they’re gonna be waived by a court.

Clients amending their own terms without fully understanding the implications. If you have a client that comes to you and they need some minor tweaks to an assignment, you might think that you can go into your contract and amend a clause and it won’t implicate any of the other clauses in that contract. But actually, amending one thing can mean that other clauses that cross-reference that clause, might also need to change. It might seem that all of your legal documents can be marginalized and they’re not that important, but actually they can have a huge impact for you later down the line.
 
Should you need any help with this, the team and I can definitely help you.