Thomas D. Barton

Expert’s Opinion Report

(1) The purest simplification efforts seek better formats for communicating the promises and conditions of the contract. Typically, these would be inside the agreement itself: using everyday language that avoids legal jargon, layouts that structure paragraphs more cleanly, and humble tools like a Table of

Business-Friendly Contracting: How Simplification and Visualization Can Help Bring It to Practice

One thesis of this book is that the legal function within businesses will shift from a paradigm of security to one of opportunity. This chapter embraces that likelihood in the context of business contracting, where voices calling for a major shift are starting to surface. It explores how contracts can be used to reach better outcomes and relationships, not just safer ones. It introduces the concept of business-friendly contracting, highlighting the need for contracts to be seen as business tools rather than exclusively as legal tools, and working as business enablers rather than obstacles. By changing the design of contracts and the ways in which those contracts are communicated—through simplification and visualization, for example—legal and business operations can be better integrated. Contracts can then be more useful to business, and contract provisions can actually become more secure by becoming easier to negotiate and implement.

Contracting for innovation and innovating contracts: an overview and introduction to the special issue

This special issue of the Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation (JSCAN) is devoted to ‘‘contracting for innovation and innovating contracts.’’ From the inception of planning for the issue, the co-editors hoped to attract contributions from a full range of professionals engaged in contract theory and practice: research academics, contract managers, corporate executives, and legal counsel, plus what JSCAN Editor-in-Chief Tyrone Pitsis told us are called ‘‘pracademics:’’ those who straddle research and commercial environments, making concrete contributions through collaborative projects, experiments, interviews, software development, or theory-building. JSCAN is a natural publication outlet for such partnerships, since so many of the 40,000 worldwide members of the International Association of Contract and Commercial Management (JSCAN’s parent organization) are thought-leaders in every aspect of commercial contracting. The outreach to a diversity of potential authors was rewarded with a rich array of articles, research reports, essays, and a book review from a broad cross-section of professionals. The collected works of this special issue come from legal and business academics, information designers, practicing attorneys, and contract consultants. The works span theory development, project description, software analysis, and suggestions for yet further innovation.