Let’s Make A Deal
7 02 2008Many years ago I studied law and even completed my law degree, however my view then and now is that commercial business law is far too important to be left to lawyers.
In short the legal considerations of law in business need to be very pragmatic and practical as part of an overall solution.
My observations since then show that the very best legal advisers are those who understand the wider business context and can help with that.
Since 1993 I have had the pleasure to watch a master at work and now some of that hard won wisdom is available to all of us. Noric Dilanchian has completed a 18 page manifesto on the practical legal considerations of deal making. Let’s Make a Deal – the full version is freely available for download and it contains a template of 7 essential deal making principles.
As Noric outlines in the beginning of his manifesto.
“Deal making should be led by process, as well as practical and commercial considerations, not purely legal considerations. It is helpful to think of deals as blueprints for living outcomes, not just glue to bind relationships.
The seven principles in this document help minimize risk and maximize returns from deal making activity. The principles are guidelines and simplifications.
They are relevant to all legal regimes. In this document they are grounded on business law in legal jurisdictions derived from the law of England, often called “common law jurisdictions” (these include Australia, Canada, England, India, Malaysia, India and the United States).”
The area I like the best is at the very end. In many respects the most important part of any deal is often the exit clause/s. While everyone has the best of intentions at the outset there needs to be much better ways to recalibrate as key variables change and a smart deal allows you to do this wisely.
In my book that relates to performance issues. Noric has devoted Principle 7 to that area.
PRINCIPLE 7: SET PERFORMANCE CONTROLS
“This final step in deal making process improvement involves effective implementation of deals. Unlike the previous principles, its practical implications apply to all the six previous principles.Our era is characterized by major shifts in business practices, models and circumstances caused by a tide of technological and business ingenuity. In most contemporary markets there is what we might call a “performance challenge.”
This challenge includes constant market demands for enhanced customer relationship management, more sophisticated products and services, and innovation at many levels. A solution is quality performance control.”
Noric is one of our featured blog links as his entire site offers many other valuable snips of legal and commercial information. His site is also one of the top law sites in Australia.
If you are unfamiliar with ChangeThis you should also check out the other 200+ manifestos there all freely available under Creative Commons licence to anyone who is interested.
“ChangeThis is a vehicle, not a publisher.
We make it easy for big ideas to spread.While the authors we work with are responsible for their own work, they don’t necessarily agree with everything available in ChangeThis format…..”
“The copyright of this work belongs to the author, who is solely responsible for the content. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License.”
And by the way I have found having a legal background very helpful in business since all roads lead to a deal of some kind or another.
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