A tool for the person who has to sign it

A vendor sends the same agreement to four hundred customers a year. Their counsel wrote it, their salespeople know which clauses they will concede, and they have watched every objection before. On the other side is somebody who runs a dental practice or a nine person agency, reading it once, at seven in the evening, between other jobs.

That asymmetry is not usually malice. It is just the shape of the market. But it means the party with the least information takes the most risk, and the fix costs three to six hundred dollars a contract, which is why most small businesses skip it and sign.

Ingrid spent seven years as commercial counsel and read roughly nine hundred vendor agreements. The same four clauses caused almost all of the damage, and almost none of the people signing them knew which four. Desmond had spent eight years building systems that read long documents. Clause is the two of those put together: the read a lawyer would do first, at a price a small business will actually pay, in a form they can act on the same afternoon.

We are careful about what we claim. Clause is not a law firm and will not tell you a deal is safe. It tells you what the document says, what it costs you, what is normal, and what to ask for. For anything that could sink the business, take that to a lawyer, and the meeting will be thirty minutes instead of three hours.