End User Agreements are too Important to Leave to Lawyers (Part I)

January 23, 2010

Seth Godin did a great job with this perspective on marketing (‘why marketing is too important to leave to the marketing department’) but it triggered something in me: Written IT agreements are too important to be left to the lawyers. Let me explain. 

I have found that most IT companies or companies looking for growth venture capital, have end user agreements provided from their outside lawyers. These agreements look like a corporate type agreement (pretty formal) and are long/way too complex. On the other hand, IBM and Oracle had non-lawyer consultants help their legal departments to simplify and streamline their end user agreements, as they realized early on that their agreements were an impediment to closing a sale (not a good thing). I doubt IT companies seeking a private equity investment or corporate venture capital can afford to hire a bunch of consultants to help them with their agreements the way IBM and Oracle did, but what they can do is not accept such complexity and length in their written end user agreements. They should challenge their lawyers to simplify and shorten these agreements. Remember that lawyers are paid by the hour, so the longer the agreement the better (these agreements are also more comprehensive, but I suggest that is not the goal here).  

More to come on this topic, but I want to plant the seed that you don’t want to put a complex written end user agreement in front of your customer and expect them to sign it!  

You can watch Seth’s video here, as it explains this concept a little more. Link to Video

President and Shareholder

<strong>Jeremy Aber</strong> consults OpenView portfolio companies on legal and contract matters. Jeremy runs his own IT focused law firm, the <a href="http://www.aberlawfirm.com/">Aber Law Firm</a>, and has over 18 years experience in technology and corporate law.