In-House Counsel

You Only Think You Know What I Mean

By Hanna

Reaching an agreement that everyone understands and a document that reflects a true meeting of the minds can be challenging.  Besides the implicit and explicit legal meaning attributed to certain words, there are the individual eccentricities, regional differences and international/ cultural differences, as Jared Sandberg points out in a recent Wall Street Journal article that make the job harder than you may realize: some cultures value relationships more than contracts.

Where personal relationships are more important than honoring contracts, the challenge takes on an added twist.  As a result, you may need to look beyond the 4-corners of the agreement to manage the legal risk associated with the transaction. 

It also makes for interesting employee relations questions, especially with an increasingly diverse employment pool.

Full post as published by Legal Literacy on January 31, 2008 (boomark / email).