Contractology Forms and Precedents

Typically, contracts and other legal documents are prepared to comply with the substantive and interpretative laws of a particular jurisdiction.

However, the legal forms available on the Contractology website are jurisdiction-neutral. This means that they have not been prepared to be suitable in any particular jurisdiction. They are instead designed to be easy for a lawyer or other contract professional to adapt for any given jurisdiction.

Our legal forms have been drafted by lawyers qualified in England and Wales, and many of the world's legal systems share the same common law tradition. The forms will typically be easier to adapt for a common law jurisdiction than for a non-common law jurisdiction. (Common law jurisdictions include the USA, India, South Africa, Malaysia, Brunei, Pakistan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.)

Each contract form includes a governing law clause, allowing you to specify the law that will govern the contract; and each contract form includes a jurisdiction clause, allowing you to select the jurisdiction whose courts will adjudicate contractual disputes. Typically, the governing law specified will be the law that is usually applied by the courts that have been granted jurisdiction under the contract.

Forms for Lawyers?

Each jurisdiction has its own laws that affect the legality and enforceability of contracts. For example, national courts will apply their own competition laws to prevent anti-competitive agreements. However, an agreement that is considered not to be anti-competitive in one jurisdiction may be considered to be anti-competitive in another.

Similarly, each jurisdiction has its own rules about how contracts should be interpreted. Some common contractual phrases (e.g. "consequential loss") mean different things to different courts.

All our forms need to be adapted by a lawyer or other contract professional before use. Because of the application of substantive national laws and national rules of interpretation, non-professionals should avoid using our forms to create legal documentation unless the legal documentation will be checked by an appropriately qualified lawyer before execution or use.

The Contractology License

The license that we grant allows our professional customers to either purchase a template in the name of their client (so that the client has the primary license to use the document) or to sub-license their client to use the document. You can see the full terms of our form license in our terms and conditions.

Legal Resources

Contractology includes a selection of free resources for lawyers and other contract professionals, such as specimen boilerplate clauses:

• force majeure clauses
• no waiver clauses
• severance clauses
• variations clauses
• third party rights clauses
• entire agreement clauses
• governing law clauses
• jurisdiction clauses