Law for CEOs

The contract risks executives consistently overlook

Liability, termination and dispute resolution. These decide the outcome when a relationship fails, and they are usually accepted as boilerplate.

EducationalExecutive briefingLast reviewed 2026-08-14No named reviewer yet

We negotiate price hard. What are we not negotiating?5 min read

Key points

A liability cap is a commercial decision about how much of your own failure risk you are absorbing. It is rarely priced as one.
Termination rights that run one way are a lock-in, whatever the term of the agreement says.
Auto-renewal with an unmonitored notice window is the most common way businesses stay in agreements they have decided to leave.
A foreign seat of arbitration can place resolution beyond practical reach for a dispute of ordinary size.
What is absent matters: no data terms where data is processed, no IP position on deliverables, no service levels.

Exposure rarely sits where the accountability does. This is where it tends to surface first.

Take these into the meeting. The value is usually in how long the answers take.