Creating a legal reality

When I consider the impact of legal training on the world we create for ourselves, I am becoming concerned. The latest scientific research in the field of quantum mechanics seems to confirm what many of us have intuitively known for years, namely that whatever focus we have in a contract is likely to show up in reality given time. Put another way, a contract whose purpose is less than positive may cause the very thing it fears happening. So in personal work, the pre-nuptial agreement has been widely seen as negative and being likely to increase the chances of a relationship failing. In business circles, such a perspective is less prevalent but the same logic dictates the same result. So surely if you come at relationships in business from distrust, surely you are increasingly the likelihood of a break down in the relationship? But short of trusting everyone, which is current business circles might be seen as suicidal for a business, what can we do?

The answer is predictable for those used to my thinking: you create a relationship from a positive perspective, focusing on all aspects of the relationship including bits that might have little or no immediate legal impact but are an important part of the focus of the relationship - the desired long term outcome of the relationship or its "vision" if you like.

Getting clarity around and then stating the vision alongside more specific objective and values for the relationship creates a powerful focus for the contract. You can then go on to deal with the more mundane mechanics of the relationship to make it work and also state, almost as an aside, what will happen "in the unlikely event of things going astray".