Using plain English to provide jargon-free contracts for our clients
Have you looked at your legal documents, contracts and terms and conditions and thought that not only are they hard to understand, they don’t really reflect your business and how you want to run it?
You’re not alone. Many purposeful businesses want to strip out the jargon from their contracts and get back to using plain English. We want to help, so we
have been working with our clients to make a whole range of documents easy to understand and fair to all parties.
Your contracts are essential to your business, and you want to ensure that they are solid, binding and protect you from risk. However, your suppliers, staff and clients are important stakeholders, so you want to ensure that your contracts are fair, balanced and reflect your desire to form long-lasting relationships and partnerships.
How we help
We regularly review and update our clients’ existing contracts to make them clearer and easier to follow, while retaining their commerciality and making them fit for (your) purpose.
Alternatively, we can provide you with fresh contracts that achieve your aims and incorporate your values – all in an easier to understand language and tone. These could cover anything including customer contracts, supplier contracts, sponsorship agreements, terms and conditions and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).
We also regularly review our clients’ employment contracts and handbooks, which are often overly employer focused in their protection and drafted with too much prominence of negative provisions, like termination, disciplinary rules and grievances.
We work with our clients to achieve a better balance between employer and employee in terms of rights and responsibilities, meaning our clients can implement balanced and progressive contracts to attract and retain their talent.
Once we have made the changes, our clients often ask us to put together a high-level overview so that the parties to the agreement are clear about the rationale and reasons for change. This makes for a more open and transparent approach to contractual discussions.
Client testimonials
Felisha McLeod, Vita Coco
“Bates Wells has provided the best service. They’ve been dedicated and diligent from the outset, going above and beyond and making the whole process as straightforward as possible. They provided some thought provoking feedback and suggestions which
were always easy to understand. Their personal service, attention to detail and flexibility reassured me that we have found the perfect firm to support us with our new employment contract and handbook.
I wholeheartedly recommend Bates Wells contract and handbook review services to any future client. Being a fellow B Corp is also the icing on the cake!”
Laura Chambers, Jack & Grace
“Jack & Grace is a purpose-driven
communications agency. As a pending B Corp, we only work with clients and partners that align with our values. When we needed a law firm to review our template contracts, Bates Wells was the natural choice. We wanted to challenge the norms and use jargon-free, friendly language to reflect our brand – the Bates Wells team were understanding, accommodating and did a brilliant job.”
David Schluter, Fluid IT
“As a small business it can be easy to end up with off-the-shelf contracts that don’t reflect who you are. We came to Bates Wells because we knew that they would be prepared to put the effort into understanding our values and help us to make our key documents a better reflection of those values; more human-centred and fair.
The team at Bates Wells have updated our employment contracts and agreements with customers. In doing so we have overhauled the legal foundations of both sides of our business in a way that represents who we are and how we want to approach both clients and our team members. In preparing to share the employment contracts we went back to Bates Wells to ask them to draft an overview of the key features of the new agreements. Getting this means that the shift to the new agreement feels much more approachable, easy to understand, human centred and fair for our people.”