The most valuable contract work happens before anyone drafts a word

If the last few years have taught business leaders anything, it’s that certainty is a luxury. Supply chains wobble, prices move overnight, and the geopolitical weather changes faster than any forecast.

In that environment, the instinct is often to nail down the contract terms as quickly as possible and move on.

But in my experience, the most valuable move happens earlier than that.

The strongest third-party relationships I see start with a proper, legally informed conversation before anyone opens a template. Sitting down with the other side — and stress-testing the relationship with your lawyers alongside you — to ask the awkward questions early: what does good look like, what happens if it doesn’t, and where are we each carrying risk?

Bottoming out those issues at the outset is what tells you what the contract really needs to do. Get that thinking right and drafting becomes the easy part; skip it, and no amount of careful drafting later will make up the difference.

Having spent much of my career embedded on the client side, here’s where I see resilient businesses focusing their energy:

• Locking in value. Being deliberate about term, pricing mechanisms and the obligations that actually matter — so the value you negotiated is still there in eighteen months, not quietly eroded.
• Building in agility. Force majeure, price-adjustment and termination provisions that reflect today’s risks rather than a template from a calmer decade. The goal is room to pivot without a dispute.
• Protecting your core assets. When budgets tighten, IP and data are often the first things under-protected and the last things you can afford to lose. They’re frequently your most valuable assets — they should be treated that way in the contract.
• Naming the risks — and who owns them — early. The most useful conversations identify the critical commercial, operational and regulatory risks up front and allocate responsibility for them clearly, rather than leaving it to be argued over later.

A recent trend illustrates the point. I am advising a growing number of new clients who want to mitigate risk on exit from a contract, and a common theme emerges: the contract does not support a structured, orderly negotiation about leaving. Exit fees are ambiguous, the mechanics are unclear, and those gaps quickly turn what should be a managed process into a contentious one.

It’s a clear example of a critical risk area — exit, and the protection of investment on exit — being overlooked at the outset, while attention is focused on the start of the relationship rather than its conclusion. That oversight tends to prove expensive.

The thread running through all of this is timing. As I’ve already pointed out, the most valuable work happens at the beginning — spotting the issues that matter before the deal is signed, and shaping both the contract and the conversation around them. Get that first move right and the rest of the relationship is far easier to manage.

One practical takeaway: before you sign your next significant third-party arrangement, ask one question — “If the world looks very different in a year, does this contract help us adapt or hold us back?” If you’re not sure, that’s exactly the point to have the conversation.

I work with businesses to make third-party relationships a genuine competitive advantage — bringing commercial, regulatory and IP together so complex projects get done. If that’s a challenge you’re wrestling with, I’m always happy to talk it through.