Who Are You? I Really Wanna Know

Its June this year. I’m in what seems to have become my new business casual attire: a shacket. (Practical, smart-but-not-too-smart, not generally worn by legal people).

But I’m also wearing a puzzled face. Because I am in a quandary.

You see, just a few days before, I’ve had a great meeting with a potential new supplier.  The approach on both sides was open and warm. The conversation was really positive and friendly. We went through all the practicalities together in a productive manner. Everything looked great. We were excited about what we should be able to achieve together.

But today I’ve just received their ‘standard’ agreement, ready to be electronically signed straightaway. 

Ordinarily, requesting an immediate signature would be more than a little presumptive. Even after 20 years of doing this ‘legal thing’, I can still count on no hands the number of times I’ve had an agreement that didn’t need something correcting in some way.  

But the ‘sign straight away’ option didn’t actually seem that odd or pushy in this instance, given how good the meetings and discussions had been.

Still, as you’d expect, I did have a wee read of the contract. And I immediately knew I wasn’t signing anything straightaway.

This contract was harsh. Strict. Demanding. It had lots of very specific requirements on what we had to do. And very little detail about what they were going to do. It asked for a number of protections that just didn’t fit the relatively simple arrangement we were going to have.  It asked for a number of things that it didn’t seem at all interested in offering back to us, even though the point applied equally to both sides. It asked for things that I’m pretty certain they wouldn’t have accepted had the roles been switched.

I could immediately tell we had work to do to get to something that would deliver for both of us. But that wasn’t my biggest worry.

Instead, my quandary came from now being unsure whether this supplier really was who they seemed, and whether I could trust them to do what we’d talked about.

I wasn’t really sure who they were any more.

Pete Townshend was inspired to write the lyrics to the fantastic title track from the Who's 1978 eighth studio album, Who Are You, after going out drinking with Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols. The night in question ended with him being found in a "Soho doorway" by a policeman, who recognized him and said he would let him go if he could safely walk away.

Pete likely wasn’t intending to write something that can really help you put the relationship first in your contracts.  But that’s what he has done, nonetheless.  Because remembering who you are as a business, and then making sure that you act true to who you are, really can help you save time, money and stress, while also landing more effective long-term results.

So to be collaborative, not combative in your contracts, you need to know the answer to The Pete Townshend Question’: “Who Are You?”

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When you know who you are, you underpin what you stand for, how trustworthy you are as a business.  

Business opportunities are hard enough to find, craft and foster, without immediately squandering all that hard work by being contradictory or inconsistent in your legal documentation.  

Yet I’m genuinely amazed at how few businesses – and how few of their lawyers (both inhouse and outhouse) – realise that their legal documents say as much about who they are as their carefully planned brand marketing campaigns.  And that producing something that doesn’t reflect who you are feels confusing, jarring, irritating, off-putting.

Apple put loads of time, money and effort into producing sleek, desirable products. Yet their terms and conditions run to some 56 pages. There’s nothing sleek or desirable about that.  It suggests they’re only sleek and desirable on the surface, but that under the hood, on the stuff that most people don’t look at, they’re “just the same as any other big bad corporate”. I’m also amazed that they don’t see the opportunity – the power – in producing something that is fully ‘on brand’, from a looks, tone and positioning perspective.  

Take a look at this employment contract for Toney’s Chocolonely, the Dutch chocolate company with a mission to end all forms of exploitation in the cocoa industry.

Toney’s deliberately distinguishes itself from traditional chocolate brands through fun, uniquely shaped chocolate bars and strong, brightly coloured branding with playful fonts.  And they extend that into their legal documents. This employment contract is right on brand, reinforcing who they are and what they stand for, all while doing exactly what it needs to.

If you pride yourself on being easy to do deal with, so should your contracts.

If you make a point of being engaged and interesting, your contracts need to do that too.

If you’re formal, exact and precise, then that’s exactly how your contracts should come across.  (I’m not just preaching that every contract needs to be modernised and jazzed up to look like a Toney’s Chocolonely contract.)

All so you don’t end up appearing shifty and untrustworthy.

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A lot of the ways in which you need to reflect who you are will be subjective: they will depend on exactly who you are, what you value, how you act. 

But there is one over-riding approach that you can take, whatever kind of business you’re in, to guide what you then ask for (and accept) in the detail of the contract.  

When look at a clause or a point, put yourself in the position of the other business, review the wording in question from that position, and ask yourself if you would accept what you’re asking for. If you wouldn't accept it, then don't ask for it in the first place.

And let’s be honest, that’s easy to do. You’re perfectly capable of empathising with the business you want to work with: it’s just that we’ve been conditioned not to. Because instead we’ve been conditioned to fight over our legal stuff. And it’s time for that to change.

So with your next contract, ask yourself The Pete Townshend Question. Then go and make sure your contract fully reflects Who You Are, making sure that, in doing so, only ask for those things that you’d accept yourself.

You could even try listening to The Who while doing that, to help you remember.

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As always, please hit reply if you’ve got any questions, thoughts, feedback or suggestions on this, or anything else Relationships First Law-related. For obvious reasons, we’ll take a couple of weeks off before getting back to it in early January. AI Andrew will still be available if you need him though – unlike Actual Andrew, he doesn’t sleep, that lad.

Finally, I just wanted to say thank you for giving me your time this year. I do this because I believe legal stuff should be done differently, and I want to help people see how it can be about anticipating, positioning and evading, rather than just doing and drafting. Your support really is appreciated, and I don’t take it for granted.

Wishing you and yours a very happy Xmas. Here’s to a great 2026!

Andrew