How Effective Are Your Terms Of Business?

When your company’s terms of business are out of date, this can leave you open to unnecessary financial and legal risks. Brachers’ Commercial law Partner Alex Cosgrove guides you through the key considerations when reviewing terms of business.

Are your terms of business (still?) fit for purpose?

A company’s terms of business are central to how it manages its legal and commercial risks, however, all too often they are overlooked as a business grows. In many cases, these terms would benefit from a refresh, including a re-alignment to the business’s current needs and activities.

How recently were your terms and conditions reviewed for required updates?

A business’s terms should be reviewed regularly to ensure that they remain up to date with any key developments with the business. This could be new lines of business being added, material changes in the size or scale of business being undertaken, or relevant new economic or market developments – all of which will directly impact the required terms and risk allocations reflected in your terms of business.

The law itself is also constantly evolving. Legal references can become out-of-date, new legal obligations imposed or legal risks created, all of which need careful consideration and appropriate reflection in your legal terms.  In practice, even where the needs of the business itself have not sufficiently changed to warrant a review of business terms, we strongly recommend a review at least every two to three years, to ensure the legal updates relevant to your business are properly reflected. For example, key recent legal developments that directly impact terms of business include:

• New case law challenging the effectiveness of exclusion of liability clauses in standard terms of business on the grounds of reasonableness.
• Key changes to the UK law on data protection, as the UK gradually departures from the EU-derived GDPR legislation post-Brexit.
• Insolvency law changes that significantly interferes with the rights of suppliers of goods or services to terminate on the basis of their customer’s insolvency.

How can Brachers help?

The Commercial team at Brachers, a Patron of Kent Invicta Chamber, are passionate that every business deserves a properly drafted set of business terms and we would encourage you to get in touch for a no-obligation discussion on how we might be able to help.

To make better Terms of Business accessible for all, we are offering, for a limited time, to conduct a health-check on any company’s standard terms of business for a fixed price of £1,500 + VAT following which you would receive a report outlining any suggested areas of improvement (and why) – which we can then discuss, and, if necessary, agree a price for drafting any changes you wish to make to your terms as a consequence.