Contract formation, negotiation and compliance in global commerce

I am in the process of preparing materials for a seminar on legal issues and contracts. While not wildly entertaining, this seminar provides legal basics for buyers including law of agency, contract formation and negotiation, breach, warranties, compliance and general legal issues. But my audience is not one of lawyers so we also discuss when to get legal help.

Yet, those instances are often few and far between. I’ve placed orders for hundreds of millions of dollars over the years with seemingly countless transactions and I’ve only been in court once. And that was unrelated to anything that I did. I was called as a witness to a situation involving the malfeasance of a manufacturer’s representative.

Sure, both buyers and sellers have long boiler plates of terms and conditions of orders and I do think they are necessary, just in case. But in actuality, most orders go through well, materials are delivered and services are provided, and invoices are paid.

Legal issues happen for sure and maybe I’ve just been lucky. Or maybe the wheels of commerce just generally work well.