What You Should Know About Contracts

Unless you plan on making it your career path, you should not expect to become an expert on legal agreements; at the same time, that doesn’t mean you should be unaware either. Fortunately, Joe Patti authored a pair of articles at Arts Hacker this week that go a long way toward a healthy indoctrination on contracts. As a big proponent of good contracts are the cornerstone of a healthy working relationship, I encourage everyone to drop by and give these articles a read.

The first post, Change Your Fundamental Concept of Contracts, helps illustrate why legal agreements are important, even for something like a collaboration. Patti spends a good bit of time examining how contracts end up becoming a conduit for communication. Sometimes those exchanges are free of conflict but not always, however, it’s important to remember that in and of itself, that’s not a bad thing. Hashing out problems in advance is far better than getting to it down the road.

The second installment, What Are The Parts Of A Contract?, is the sort of nuts-and-bolts examination that makes ArtsHacker so useful.

The articles are equally useful for each stakeholder and since we’re waist deep in white hot labor disputes, brushing up on the basics of contracts will almost certainly enhance your understanding of what’s unfolding in Fort Worth and Pittsburgh.