Contracts are tremendously flexible legal instruments. Between two parties of reasonably equivalent bargaining power, a well-drafted contract can memorialize the goals of the parties and provide a roadmap for remedies, should one party fail to live up to the terms of their obligation.

But, there are some the limits to what can be contracted. Some...

Contracts permit a very broad range of promises to be made. But some things cannot be contracted away, or at least, not easily. Your right to go to court is one of those items. Arbitration is a powerful and useful tool to resolve many of the disputes that arise in relation to contracts. In many...

A contract is one of the most fundamental elements of modern business and commercial law. A contract is designed to represent the meeting of the minds of the parties, and allows them to fix the future.

A well-drafted contract details all of the important, relevant aspects of a deal or transaction. As to length, they...

Development projects always carry risk. For the developer, issues of completion of the project on time and under budget, the successful sale or lease of the project and the potential for accidents during the project. For a general contractor or subcontractors, the risk is always that the project will collapse before the last check clears,...

Business is all about relationships. In order to have successful business, you and your business must be trusted in all of your relationships, whether that means your customers, suppliers, or investors. One of the reasons why operating a business is complex and difficult is that none of these relationships works in isolation, yet the individual...

When drafting an employment contract, an operating agreement for a Limited Liability Company (LCC) or any other business agreements, an important component of these instruments should be a noncompete clause. A noncompete clause, when properly drafted, can help protect your business and your investments, and prevent employees and partners from stealing your business opportunities. A judge...

In many ways, contracts are one of the most important foundations of business. A valid contract allows two parties to lay out the terms of a business deal or relationship in a way that is legally binding.

Ideally speaking, all parties involved in a contract would always fulfill the terms of a contract to the...

One of the threads we've been following in this blog is the status of noncompete agreements in Massachusetts. This issue has been in the news since last April, when Governor Deval Patrick proposed a ban on such agreements. As we noted in our April 18 post, many people believe that noncompete contracts...

This is a follow-up to piece we did last month on noncompete agreements. As we noted in our March 27 post, there are many factors that affect the enforceability of noncompete clauses in employment contracts. In this follow-up, we will take note of a column today in the business section of the...

A half century ago, in the world depicted on the popular TV show "Mad Men," the world was a much simpler (some would say simplistic) place. To be sure, the rigid dichotomies were reassuring for many people. It was all too easy to stereotype and segregate people based on dichotomies: men and women, Russians and...