Software Contracts

Publisher: Bloomsbury Professional

Author: Robert Bond

Price: £290.00 plus 10% VAT

Edition: 4th Edition (May 2010)

ISBN: 978-1-84766-671-0

Buy from Bloomsbury Professional: Click Here

Given the amount of money being spent on software projects, both in the public and private sectors, getting the right contract is a key stage.  Robert Bond's Software Contracts aims to cover the legal, regulatory and commercial issues involved in the drafting and negotiating of software contracts.  It is a substantial size and includes a CD-ROM containing editable versions of the precedents.  For me, however, it falls a little short of providing an indispensible guide for software contracts lawyers.

Written by Robert Bond, a solicitor with more than thirty years' experience, Software Contracts is split in to five parts (wrongly noted as four parts in the index): introduction; laws and regulations; preparing for negotiations; preparing for drafting; and negotiating tactics and techniques.  Each part is then split in to a number of chapters.  For example, the part dealing with preparing for drafting includes an excellent checklist of the content of a typical software licence agreement.

The most surprising feature of Software Contracts is that just over one quarter of the text is devoted to the law and commercial considerations with the rest being precedents.  This impacts on the quality of the commentary as the text is therefore pitched at a high level.  This means that the underlying (and detailed) law is often inadequately explained.  Paragraph 4.7 also wrongly refers to the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1994: these have, of course, been replaced by the 1999 Regulations.  The chapters dealing with contract negotiation do, however, provide some useful tips on approaching meetings and dealing with negotiations.

Software Contracts has a number of excellent precedents which can be easily adapted by experienced practitioners.  For me, it is more of a precedent text with some high level commentary.  Practitioners wanting to understand the legal aspects of software contracts will therefore need to look elsewhere.  Those wanting useable precedents will, however, find Software Contracts an excellent resource.  Its price may mean, unfortunately, that only practitioners specialising in software contract law will add it to their libraries.

Reviewed on 5 April 2011

© Student Law Journal, 2001 - All Rights Reserved

Home | News | Academic Articles | Practitioner Articles | Editorial Board | Article Submission | Contact | Links | Book Reviews