What to give Talden before a contract review

Start with the current documents.

The agreement tells only part of the story. To make a review relevant, explain the client’s position, the commercial objective and the decision the work needs to support.

Provide the agreement you actually need reviewed. Include schedules, an order form, a data-processing addendum or other related material when it affects the assignment. Identify which version is current and whether an earlier draft is being supplied only for comparison. Missing schedules should be identified as missing, not silently treated as complete.

Explain the deal in a short brief.

State who the client is, which side it is on, what the transaction is intended to achieve and when an answer is needed. Identify the audience for the result. An internal negotiation note and a client-facing explanation are not the same deliverable.

Make priorities explicit.

Say which issues are non-negotiable, which are preferences and where the business can make a trade-off. Describe a proposed position as an instruction, not as a claim about what the law or the market always requires. Add relevant precedents or a playbook with their context.

Name the uncertainties.

A proposed data use, insurance limit or implementation arrangement may not yet be confirmed. Flag that uncertainty. It is better to receive a focused question than an answer resting on an invented fact.

Ask for a useful result.

Specify whether you need a prioritized issue list, proposed drafting, questions for the business, a short explanation or a combination. Then check the result against the source documents and the instructions. The purpose is not to collect more output; it is to make the next decision easier to examine.