As usual around this time of year, the Practical Law Commercial team have been looking back and asking ourselves what has changed in contract law and drafting? Specifically, what developments in 2020 affect commercial lawyers as they manage existing contracts or draft new ones? We agreed that 2020 was full of changes in practice, even where the letter of the law hasn’t (yet) changed (much).
For example, 2020 brought us:
- New restrictions on terminating contracts during a corporate insolvency procedure, under the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020.
- COVID-19 and Brexit, both raising unfamiliar problems in existing contract law.
- Contractual duties of good faith: still a developing area, though no real gains in clarity in 2020.
- A judgment illustrating the value of worked examples in a commercial contract.
We have summarised these and other changes of 2020 a new article, with links to in-depth resources on each development: Practical Law Commercial: lessons from 2020 for contract drafting and management.
