A clear read on whether to sign, before you commit.
Someone sent you a contract and wants it back signed. You have read it twice and you still do not know what you are agreeing to. What you need is not a legal treatise. It is a straight answer about what this agreement does to your business and what is worth pushing back on.
Fixed scope, quoted before the work begins. 20+ years, IP and business litigation.
Why now and not later
A contract is easiest to change before anyone signs it. The moment you sign, your leverage is gone. Terms you did not notice become terms you are bound by, and the cost of fixing them shifts from a conversation to a dispute.
Most of the contracts that cause real damage were not obviously bad. They were unremarkable documents with one clause that mattered, signed by someone who was busy and assumed it was standard.
Practical, not academic
You are not looking for a memo. You are looking for someone who has read a few thousand of these to tell you where the problems are, whether they are worth fighting over, and what to say to the other side.
So that is what this is. The contract gets read against your actual situation, not against a checklist. The issues get sorted into what genuinely matters, what is worth asking for, and what is normal and not worth spending your negotiating capital on.
Every contract has terms that look alarming and are standard. It also tends to have one or two that look standard and are not. Knowing which is which is most of the value, and it is the part that does not come from reading the document more carefully yourself.
Answers you can act on the same day.
What is included, and what is not
WHAT THE REVIEW COVERS
- Reading the agreement against your business and what you actually need from the deal
- A clear recommendation on signing, with the reasoning behind it
- Identification of the terms that carry real risk for you
- Suggested revisions or redline language for the points worth raising
- A conversation to walk through it, so you can ask the questions the document raises
The scope is deliberately bounded. That is what makes it fast and what makes the fee predictable.
QUOTED SEPARATELY
- Negotiating directly with the other side on your behalf
- Drafting the agreement from scratch
- Multiple rounds of revision as the deal changes
- Disputes under a contract already signed
- Deal structuring, diligence, or transaction work
If the review shows you need any of these, you will hear it early, with a scope and a fee, rather than discovering it on an invoice.
Most people do not need every clause explained. They need to know which two clauses are going to matter, and what to do about them before they sign.
Is this the right thing to ask for?
THIS FITS IF
You have a contract in hand. A client agreement, a vendor contract, a lease, a partnership document, an NDA that seems to go further than an NDA should. You want to understand it and respond to it, and you want that this week.
SOMETHING ELSE FITS BETTER IF
You need the agreement written rather than read, or you need someone to negotiate it directly with the other party. That is contract work, not review, and it is scoped differently. If a contract has already been signed and something has gone wrong, that is a dispute.
Questions people ask
How fast is this?
Fast enough to be useful, which is the point. Tell us your deadline in the first message. If you are signing Monday, say so, and you will get a straight answer about whether that is workable rather than a surprise later.
What does it cost?
It depends on the contract. A two-page NDA and a forty-page master services agreement are not the same work, and pretending otherwise would mean overcharging for one of them. Send it over, and you get a scope and a fee before anything starts.
The other side says the terms are non-negotiable.
Sometimes that is true. Often it is a negotiating position, and it is worth knowing which before you accept it. Even where terms genuinely cannot move, knowing what you are accepting changes how you price the deal and how you operate under it.
Can you just tell me if it is standard?
Partly, but standard is not the useful question. Plenty of standard terms are bad for you specifically, and plenty of unusual terms are fine. What matters is what this contract does to your business, which is a different question than whether it resembles other contracts.
What if the review says do not sign?
Then you have saved yourself the deal, which is frequently the highest-value outcome of the exercise. You will get the reasoning, not just the verdict, so you can decide with your eyes open. It is your business and your call.
Have a contract in front of you?
Send it over with your deadline and a sentence about the deal. You will get a scope and a fee before any work begins.
Not sure what you need? A Strategy Session is $350, credited in full toward the work if you move forward.
Practical legal counsel for businesses building something worth protecting.