Contracts: process review, simplification, early intervention, and formal approvals (Navigation Technologies)

I referred to my recent article, describing 30 techniques for improving contract activities (Legal Times, Nov. 21, 2005), and added three more ideas in my post of Dec. 3, 2005.

In 2003, according to a piece in Corp. Legal Times, Vol. 13, July 2003, that cited Lawrence Kaplan, the general counsel of Navigation Technologies, his company’s law department upgraded how it handled the flood of licensing agreements.

The law department (1) evaluated the company’s entire contract-management process, (2) revised its standard license agreements to be “short, simple, and easy to read and negotiate,” (3) adapted them to be useful internationally without much redrafting, (4) created opportunities for the legal department to give guidance early in the contracting process, and (5) pushed salespeople to seek formalized approvals before agreeing to changes from standard pricing models.