An independent contractor is a person who has been hired for a business and is not an employee of the company. An independent contractual agreement does not necessarily require the document to be written down. It may be an oral contract and remains final. However, oral agreements can lead to misunderstandings. It is preferable to have a business agreement that defines the obligations of the independent contractor, the amount of compensation and how a dispute is resolved. While these are some of the most common legal agreements you might see in an economic context, they can cover an almost infinite number of topics as long as the elements are in place and are not prohibited by law. And while some contracts may not need to be written, ALWAYS is a better idea to do so. Many companies enter into credit contracts with banks or financial institutions and simply sign the lender`s standard form. The standard form tends to be very one-sided in favour of the lender, with various constraints for the borrower. Asset acquisition contracts are the vehicle in which share sales can be made. Such agreements can take place from a few parties up to 50 or more, depending on the investors and the complexity of the agreement.

For reasons of clarity, a “contract” is a formal process and can be written or oral. The term “agreements” is also used and, although it is generally interchangeable, large-scale agreements are often less formal, but may become formal if the elements of a contract are in place. So you could “agree” to help a friend cut down a tree, but it is not a “binding contract” unless there are many other elements of that agreement that both parties approve of and that are related or must be negotiated in a way that has shown that it intends to be tied to it. If this subject was taught at the Law School, it was called “contract law,” not “contract law,” so let`s go on by giving the subject its real name. A commercial contract is a legally binding agreement between two or more persons or entities. The complexity in contracts is only part of the reality of doing business today. Our board is not frustrated by this, kiss it! One of the reasons treaties are sometimes so complex is that there is a lot of case law behind the term you have read. A term is in principle one of the paragraphs of a contract with a title on this subject. It`s not just lawyers who are clumsy, someone somewhere might have paid a lot of money to test that term in court, so keep the tums comfort. Just because the last contract you had wasn`t that long and you liked it, because it was short, doesn`t mean it was a good contract. I write about startups, venture capital, mergers and acquisitions and Internet companies. I am a managing director and general manager of M-A at VantagePoint Capital Partners, a large venture capital fund in the San Francisco area.

As a venture capitalist, I focus on investing in internet and digital media companies. I am the author of several books on startups and entrepreneurship. I am also the founder or co-founder of several Internet companies that have sold them to NBC Interactive, LexisNexis and D-B.