Keep your options open during contract negotiations

By Richard Bland

It is obviously important for a person to know what his contractual obligations are; but it is equally important to know when those obligations are created. Once a contract is created, the parties lose their freedom to negotiate for better terms or make a deal with someone else, so the prudent negotiator makes sure that his pre-contractual discussions cannot be mistaken for a binding contract. Consider a couple of examples.

“There’s no deal, because I didn’t sign a contract.” These words are often uttered, but one should never hang his hat on the fact that there…