Introduction Some contracts reveal themselves in their very title. The one that landed on my desk was called “Agreement for consulting services on wind energy projects and for the supply and installation of a meteorological mast, and other matters.” It looked like a technical contract, like so many others. But the heart of the deal was hidden in the “other matters,” that expression that usually holds whatever is left over. My clients, a consulting firm, had been hired to prov

How many poems have been written in bars? How many declarations of love made on restaurant napkins? Or how many projects and sketches drawn on bakery countertops? Many people have surely already written about that. But my subject here is contracts. How many successful partnership and joint venture agreements were born on a napkin that, just minutes before, had been holding a glass of wine? I don't know that statistic. But last night I received, written on a paper napkin, the

It was the eve of Carnival, specifically Friday, February 13th—yes, Friday the 13th—when I received a message from a client questioning my opinion on how to conduct an ongoing business relationship, particularly regarding a highly relevant decision-making process. I step back in time. Ten months earlier, a partner consultant had referred my name to this same client—whom I will identify as Company A —who needed to rebuild a strategic supply relationship. The client had been in