The idea that automation will replace humans at the workplace is not only false, just the opposite is true. People will matter more today and in the future than ever before, even though digitalization will replace up to 50 to 60 percent of work normally done manually. Automation cannot provide insights into the business. Digitization alone cannot provide more analytical, strategy and relationship-focused work to the organization. This articles takes a very positive focus on how we humans can maximize this emerging change in our landscape.

I was talking with my friend and her daughter last week, explaining a bit about what I have been doing lately when her daughter asked me a question—why would I choose a career in contract management?

Many presentations have been given on why the new engineering contract (NEC) is so different from other standard forms of contract. I have given quite a few myself over the last 25 years. But I have only recently focused on the criticality of just one word in the NEC contracts: forecast. It’s important to keep in mind four key points:

No doubt about it - a foolish decision can ruin an agreement. If you have ever done that, you might want to know some of most common mind freezes that can lead to unwise decisions and costly results. This article speaks to that issue, includes a case study to illustrate it, and provides better ways to approach a decision before you make it, especially if it will affect important outcomes.

My LinkedIn July 2020 article titled Manufacturing a future for Australia¹ surrounds how we have scrambled to establish alternate local supply lines for goods, including personal protective equipment (PPE) masks and groceries, as well as services, such as call center support and as-a-service provisioning.

As the global pandemic continues to impact economies and industries worldwide, corporate legal teams and firms are being deeply impacted. Predictions vary widely on the longer-term effect that COVID-19 will have on the legal industry. Despite the near term challenges, sources like the National Law Review see a much brighter picture in the future, with new or evolving companies that emerge out of the crisis needing help with incorporating, running, and protecting their businesses.

This article introduces ten ways to embed images into contracts to reach greater clarity and avoid confusion. It demonstrates a first step toward reducing worries around the legal interpretation of contract visualization -- an emerging field of research and practice.   It builds on and expands the authors’ recent work on using and interpreting images in contracts.¹

Have you ever tried to draft a statement of work (SOW) only to find out that no uniform clause exists for determining net present value in commercial item contracts? Did you know the Federal Acquisition Regulations System¹ also known as FAR is what the United States Government uses when drafting a statement of work (SOW)?

Greg Tharp, who has written excellent articles for us recently, offers this two-part series about cost recovery for commercial item contracts.  He starts with this question…

What follows is an update of Arnaud Cervera’s article that was originally published March 14, 2020, on LinkedIn. We preface his piece with an endorsement from Tim Cummins, President of IACCM, who stated recently,

“This is an excellent article and absolutely hits the right points on the combination of simplification and the use of artificial intelligence (AI.) I’d like to suggest there are two additional issues that need to be addressed to make this change fast and effective.

1. Economics- IACCM has been spending time (and using AI) to analyze the powerful business case - not only within individual organizations, but also now in the context of national economies.

2. Standards - For benefits to be sustainable, we should avoid the mistake of replacing one art form (individual approaches to design and drafting) with another. There is a growing army of ‘design specialists’, each with their own view of how it should be done. Imagine if accountants took a similar view to producing accounts - we would finish up with replacing one form of chaos with another.

So again, IACCM has been working to create a publicly available ‘design library’. It’s also worth mentioning that the legal authorities which oversee court and dispute systems need to come on board with this - so we are working on that too.” - Tim Cummins