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Presented by
Falconbury

4-day International Commercial Contracts School Training Course

This specially designed four-day seminar has been expressly developed to focus exclusively on the law and regulations governing business and contract law for cross-border contracts.

★★★★★ "very good speaker and very knowledgeable, with significant experience in negotiating international c... more (7)"

19-22 May 2025 »
from £1999

Need help?  Enrol or reserve

Course overview

This four-day International Commercial Contracts School will give you a detailed understanding of contract law, drafting techniques and negotiation tactics. 

Presented by Mark Weston, an international specialist in the field, the course will enable participants to effectively navigate the complex areas of drafting and negotiating contracts. It will provide the practical skills and knowledge needed to give you the confidence to understand and draft your agreements successfully.

With this in mind, we have developed this modular and comprehensive multi-part programme that focuses on delivering practical and applied training of the key drafting and negotiating skills needed to create transparent and direct contracts that deliver on a legal and commercial level. Each module of the course builds on the module before.

Module one: Legal relationships, interpretation and formation of contracts focuses on understanding legal relationships, explains the fundamentals of how contracts are interpreted and looks at the formation of your contracts 

Module two: Drafting and negotiating skills looks at expanding your drafting skills to deliver concise and watertight agreements and pre-contract negotiation skills 

Module three: Negotiating in the international business arena looks in more detail at negotiation planning and process, focussing on specific techniques

Module four: Boilerplate and standard clauses considers how these clauses can be drafted and applied to leverage commercial value and manage legal risk, while considering governing law and jurisdiction

Attend the full four-days or SELECT which modules you would like to attend. To find out more and get individual module prices call Customer Services on +44 (0)20 7749 4749 or email info@falconbury.co.uk

Practical interactive learning style

This workshop-style programme has been designed to offer a practical solution to your drafting challenges. Throughout the programme the expert presenter will use a balanced mix of theory, group exercises, discussion, sample clauses and case studies to provide you with a comprehensive portfolio of practical tips and techniques to draft contracts which meet your commercial objectives as well as ensuring that there are no ‘surprises’ further on.

Please note: When attending the online version of this course, participants are required to join with the ability to turn on their cameras. This is an essential requirement in order to fully participate in the training course due to the interactive nature of the programme.

This training course is part of our Commercial Contracts Training Course collection which has been designed for the in-house lawyer.

Benefits of attending

By attending this course you will:

  • Expand your knowledge of commercial contract format and structure
  • Understand negotiating law and pre-contract documentation and discussions
  • Get to grips with express and implied terms and standard terminology
  • Understand the pitfalls and pluses to applying an effective standard structure and format to every contract
  • Master practical drafting techniques to write concise and effective agreements
  • Examine the effect of exclusion and limitation clauses, and how they can be used to manage your exposure
  • Learn how to prepare your specific negotiation plan
  • Consider the purpose and effect of typical boilerplate clauses and how you can leverage value for your organisation through clearer drafting
  • Discuss any disputes or issues you are facing with colleagues from other organisations to gain new ideas and perspectives

Who should attend?

This 4-day course has been specially designed for:

  • Heads of legal
  • In-house counsel
  • Contracts directors and managers
  • Commercial directors and managers
  • Senior business development executives
  • Private practice lawyers
  • Professional advisors

Presenters Firm

Weston Legal is a leading specialist boutique firm specialising in Commercial law, Technology law, Media law, Intellectual Property law, Data law and Regulatory law and practice. From its founding, the firm has always committed to provide a fast and efficient service wherever its clients operate. As its business has grown and diversified, it has recognised the strength and importance of the principles held by its people; putting clients first and operating as one team to realise its goals and share its success. These principles have formed the foundation of its culture and the way its lawyers interact with one another and the firm’s clients. They are what distinguish it and are vital to its future.

To find out more about what Weston Legal can do for you, please contact Mark at westonlegal.ltd or see https://uk.linkedin.com/in/markwestonlegal


Mark also operates as a leading consultant to Hill Dickinson LLP, a leading and award-winning international law firm with offices in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Piraeus, Singapore, Monaco and Hong Kong. As a full service law firm, it delivers advice and strategic guidance spanning the full legal spectrum from non-contentious advisory and transactional work, to all forms of dispute resolution. The firm is on the panel of a number of national and international organisations and regularly competes against many of the City firms. In recent months, they have been able to win a number of panel reviews against City firms.

To find out more out what Mark can do for you via Hill Dickinson, please contact him via www.hilldickinson.com

Enrol or reserve

This course will cover:

Module 1: Basics and necessary theoretical underpinning

  • Introduction to legal relationships: When are you obligated to someone?
    • Discussion
    • Common law:
      • Torts
      • Contracts
      • Statutory duties
      • Equity
    • Civil law
      • Civil codes
  • Contract Interpretation
    • A contract: what’s it all for?
    • Systems of law
    • Legal systems of the world
      • Civil law -v- common law approaches
    • English law:
      • Precedent (and some Latin)
      • Interpretation and construction
      • Classical contract interpretation (6 canons)
      • Clarity and ambiguity
      • Modern contract interpretation (10 principles)
      • The relevance of background to a contract
  • Some things to think about when drafting:
    • Breach of contract
    • Remedies and enforcement
  • How do you form a contract?
    • Ingredients to form a contract
      • Battle of the forms
    • Distinctions between negotiations and contracts:
      • Have you accidentally formed a contract while negotiating?
        • 'Subject to contract'
        • 'Without prejudice'

Module 2: Skills for drafting a contract

  • Commercial contract format and structure
    • Law and custom
    • Tone and format
    • Deed or under hand?
    • Mapping the deal
      • The free draft
      • The tied draft: structures of typical commercial contracts
    • Examining our agreement
  • Negotiating law, ancillary documentation and contracts
    • Negotiating law
    • Pre-contract documentation and discussions
      • Prevention is better than cure
      • Words to avoid
        • LDs and penalties
    • The pre-contract process
      • Preparation
      • Negotiations
      • Pre-contract documents
      • Interim Agreements
    • Pre-contract contracts (TLAs)
    • Content of TLA documents
    • Agreements to Agree and change
  • Terms: express, implied and standard terminology
    • Implied terms
      • 3 types
      • Plus 1
    • Express terms
      • Time is of the essence
      • Endeavours
    • Standard terminology
      • reasonable
      • substantial
      • material
  • Drafting techniques (practical tips)
  • Drafting techniques: the hard stuff (1)
    • Shall, will, endeavours
    • WCI
    • Undertakings
    • Representations
  • Drafting techniques: the hard stuff (2)
    • Warranties
    • Indemnities
  • Exclusion and limitation clauses
    • Famous liability myths
    • Internationally accepted practice
    • Factors which do and do not affect liability
    • Negotiating liability clauses: B2B
    • Arguments by each side
    • Drafting liability clauses: B2B
    • Types and categories of loss
    • UCTA
    • Process issues

Module 3: Negotiating in the international business arena

  • Simplifying complexity
  • Background
    • Negotiation - what do we mean?
    • Good negotiators
  • A negotiation process model
    • General knowledge: know yourself and CP
      • Understanding fears
      • Understanding paralanguage
      • Understanding body language
      • Understanding negotiation styles
      • International negotiations: understanding context
      • International negotiations: understanding culture
    • Specific deal knowledge: know the deal
      • Understanding stakeholder interests
      • Understanding the key objectives
      • Understanding commercial leverage
      • BATNA
      • WATNA
      • Bottom line
      • ZOPA
  • Prepare your specific negotiation plan
    • Understanding and preparing your SIIOOPS
    • Preparing your team composition
    • Rehearsing
    • Setting the agenda
    • Preparing the environment
    • Defining communication rules
  • The negotiation
    • Negotiate!
    • Strategy and sharing
    • Feedback
  • Negotiation techniques
    • Techniques around offers and counters
    • Techniques to resolve conflicts
    • Techniques to build trust
    • Techniques to get past negotiation obstacles
    • Ploys and counterploys
    • Situational tactics
    • Closing

Module 4: Boilerplate and standard clauses

  • Introduction to boilerplate
  • Transferring Contractual Obligations
    • Transferring rights
      • Assignment
      • Novation
      • Other
    • Third party rights
      • Privity
      • Some history
      • Practical examples
      • The 1999 rules
      • Drafting issues and traps
  • Welded Boiler-plate
    • Part 1: Interpretation
    • Part 2: Notice and Communications
    • Part 3: Waiver
    • Part 4: Invalidity and severance
    • Part 6: Force majeure
  • Entire agreement clauses
  • Governing law, jurisdiction and dispute resolution clauses
  • Miscellaneous boilerplate
    • Announcements
    • Counterparts
    • Partnerships
    • Government contracts
    • Non-solicitation
    • Further assurances
    • Equitable relief
    • Signatures

Enrol or reserve

Mark Weston
Weston Legal

Mark Weston has run his own law firm, Weston Legal, since 1 January 2024. He is also a consultant at Hill Dickinson LLP where he joined in February 2016 as a partner and Head of its Commercial, TMT & IP Practice. Before that, he was a partner and Head of the Commercial/IP/IT Team at Matthew Arnold & Baldwin LLP and before that, he spent several years at Baker & McKenzie in London and Chicago and has also previously been seconded to Hewlett Packard and other technology businesses. He changed role to become a consultant in Hill Dickinson’s London office in January 2024.

Expertise: Mark’s practice covers both non-contentious and contentious matters in all areas of commercial law, intellectual property law, information technology law, Internet, electronic commerce and on-line services law. He specialises in commercial and Tech issues. Mark is used as a ‘trusted adviser’ by many clients in all sorts of businesses and often acts as ‘private practice in-house counsel’ for many clients. He specialises in tech and internet businesses.

Clients: Just some of Mark’s more well-known clients include Elstree Film Studios, RTL Group S.A., Sykes Cottages, Retailcorp Brands LLC, The Gulf Marketing Group, Moneynetint Limited and the BBC.

Some detail: Mark has extensive experience in advising clients on all manner of commercial matters (such as business planning and solutions, franchising, distribution, agency and marketing) through branding and intellectual property exploitation and licensing, to advice and documentation regarding hardware and software issues (such as development, licensing, maintenance and distribution, SaaS and cloud, Internet transactional solutioning, B2B, B2C and B2G electronic commerce, S-commerce and M-Commerce, social media, outsourcing, facilities management, procurement, IT policies, data protection (privacy), GDPR and freedom of information issues as well as artificial intelligence (AI)). He has a particular expertise in new digital business and revenue streams. He is also experienced in dealing with software disputes and IT litigation. The increasingly extensive media side of his practice relates primarily to publishing (both real world and digital content), to games and gaming platforms (and particularly transmedia technologies), advising companies about their advertising onscreen, online and in print and managing their public communications strategies generally (dealing with the CMA and ASA in the process) – and also a smattering of television, film and music exploitation. Recently he has been very active in AI advice.

More unusual: 

Mark has previously spent several months on secondment to Hewlett Packard and he has also been seconded to assist in the legal problems arising in new technology companies such as Symbian. From 2000 to 2001, Mark was resident in the Chicago office of Baker & McKenzie advising US clients on European and UK aspects of IT and electronic commerce law and practice.

Mark is the author of the Legal Practice Companion, a parallel text book used at several law schools, the editor of the IP and Media Law Companion as well as the rest of the Companion series of books published by Bloomsbury Professional, Tottels, Cavendish Publishing and Oxford University Press. He has noted numerous reports for the IT Law Reports and is widely published in Computing, Computers & Law, Computer Law & Security Report, IT Law Today, Intellectual Property World, Solicitors Journal and many other journals both online and offline. Mark has also authored articles syndicated in the national and trade press and is regularly quoted in national newspapers and is heard on radio as an expert in his fields. Mark is the author of the Business Names on the Internet chapter in the PLC Ecommerce Manual as well as numerous other articles on various Commercial & IT law topics.

Mark lectures regularly on all Commercial, IP and IT law topics, including at the IBC IT ‘Summer School’ Programme in Cambridge, England; the Falconbury and MBL two-day and three-day Commercial Contracts seminars (run several times a year) and IT Contracts seminars (run three times a year) in London; and he has previously lectured at the Annual On-line & Internet Commerce Law Institute seminar in Chicago and tutored at University College London.  He also runs a programme of bespoke training schemes on commercial law, IP law, IT law, AI law and data law as well as soft skills programmes such as negotiation skills and presentation skills.

Finally, you may have seen that Mark likes blogging and writing books, which are available at all good bookshops! He also appears regularly on BBC1 (usually providing advice on-screen to BBC Watchdog) and also on Sky News as a legal commentator, as well as trying to avoid the huge quantity of pink powder the TV make-up girls want to apply to his increasingly receding hairline.

More details

NEW higher discounts for multiple bookings - bring your colleagues to make your training budget go further:

  • 30% off the 2nd delegate*
  • 40% off the 3rd delegate*
  • 50% off the 4th delegate*

Please contact us for pricing if you are interested in booking 5 or more delegates

19-22 May 2025

Summer school

Classroom
Rembrandt Hotel
London

09:00-16:30 UK (London)
Timings may be different for each day
Course code 14757
Optional £270/€351/$405 per night

  • GBP 1,999 2,399
  • EUR 2,879 3,439
  • USD 3,295 3,919

Until 14 Apr

  • 4 days classroom-based training
  • Optional accommodation - 4 nights including breakfast, checking in the day before the course
  • Meet presenters and fellow attendees in person
  • Lunch and refreshments provided
  • Download documentation and certification of completion
  • Fair transfer and cancellation policy

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for 7 days, no obligation

* Early booking discounts may not be combined with other discounts or offers. As such, the discounts for 2nd/3rd/4th delegates are based on the full price; and apply only when booking multiple delegates on the same date.

Reviews of IPI's 4-day International Commercial Contracts School training course


very good speaker and very knowledgeable, with significant experience in negotiating international contracts.

Nov 20 2023

Kjelle Fillet
Legal Counsel EMEA, Mediagenix NV

Dec 5 2022

I am lucky to have this course with a qualified and expert Lawyer. He has sufficient knowledge to provide this course.

Shatha A Alkhalifa
Legal adviser, Saudi Food and Drug Authority

Dec 5 2022

I am lucky to have this course with a qualified and expert Lawyer. He has sufficient knowledge to provide this course.

Shatha A Alkhalifa
Legal adviser, Saudi Food and Drug Authority

Dec 5 2022

I would definitely recommend it. Achieved improvements and understood many issues.

Francesco Macorig
Legal specialist, Danieli & C. Officine Meccaniche S.p.A.

Dec 5 2022

Very good content, many topics covered, it takes time now to assimilate all the information. Speaker with a very good knowledge of day-to-day contract negotiation.

Natacha Batista
Legal Manager, ASCENZA AGRO, S.A.

Mar 21 2022

Mark was an adept and polished speaker and knew his subject matter inside out.

Mark Hindmarch
Sales Office Manager, Krohne Limited

Mar 15 2021

The programme content was very detailed and included all the important points, the presentation was very good and the speaker delivered the information in a manner that was very easy for one to understand and assimilate.

Patricia Ifewulu
Company Secretary / Head of Legal & Compliance, Continental Reinsurance Plc

Netherlands

  • Cyclomedia Technology B.V.
  • Entuli Law Firm
  • Nouryon

Nigeria

  • Continental Reinsurance Plc
  • Sahara Energy Resource DMCC
  • Sahara Group Ltd

United Kingdom

  • Genus plc
  • Krohne Limited
  • SRK Consulting (UK) Ltd

Belgium

  • AG Real Estate
  • Mediagenix NV

France

  • Amadeus SAS
  • ESSILOR INTERNATIONAL (COMPAGNIE GENERALE D'OPTIQUE)

Austria

  • OPEC

Bahrain

  • Bahrain Petroleum Company (Bapco)

Italy

  • Danieli & C. Officine Meccaniche S.p.A.

Malta

  • Adalvo

Norway

  • Fugro Norway AS

Portugal

  • ASCENZA AGRO, S.A.

Saudi Arabia

  • Saudi Food and Drug Authority

Turkey

  • SOCAR

Enrol or reserve

Run 4-day International Commercial Contracts School Classroom for your team

4 days

Typical duration

Pricing from:

  • GBP 1,600
  • Per attendee, based on 10 attendees
  • Course tailored to your requirements
  • At your choice of location, or online

 

We can customise this course to your requirements and deliver it on an in-house basis for any number of your staff or colleagues.

Contact our in-house training experts Aleksandra Beer and Yesim Nurko to discuss your requirements:

Multiple colleagues? See above for details of our discounts for 2, 3, or 4 delegates. For more, talk to one of our training experts to discuss how to:

Run this course conveniently and cost-effectively in-house for your staff and colleagues

Aleksandra Beer

Aleksandra BEER
Training expert

Yesim Nurko

Yesim NURKO
Training expert

+44 (0)20 7749 4749

inhouse@ipi.academy