THERE ARE TWO PARTS TO THIS ASSIGNMENT-
PART ONE: Design the Contract
In this part of the assignment your mission, should you decide to accept it, (like you have a choice) will be to create a contract. This assignment requires that you come up with a contract on your own and that might actually be used by you in your life. Think about your life and what areas may need some clarification. Maybe you want to clarify your rights and responsibilities of being a boyfriend, girlfriend, or between parents and children. Maybe it deals with where you work and the fact that co-workers need to pull their own weight and you would like to reassign the responsibilities of the office... Anything that needs "fixing" is something a contract can be used for.
Examples of previous MBA contracts include: Lawn Maintenance Contract, Employment babysitting contract, house-sitting contract, building a garage
The Key here is you have an attorney who is going to comment on your work for "free", you might as well use it.
Warning: DO NOT USE FORM CONTRACTS: A form contract is a preprinted form that you might get from work or from the Internet. Also, I'm grading YOUR work not the work of your corporate attorneys. Ie I don't want you to use a work contract. Why... One there is no original thinking and Two they often are legally insufficient or have clauses that you wouldn't use... I had one former EMBA student who used a contract from work and tried to change it to a dog walking contract but it had clauses in there for the dog walker to be in compliance with ISO 9001 quality control standards..... Lets just say that it didn't go over well... Also, no landlord-Tennant lease agreements... WHY, they are too much like form contracts and frankly I get tired of reading lease agreements because everyone does them.
The contract must conform to the specifications below. It should "look" like a real contract. There is an obvious flow to the format of a contract... Identify the parties before you go into the rights and responsibilities ect...
Section One: Will detail the parties to the contract and the term of the contract.
Section Two: Will be a definition section that will define certain key terms you will use. PLEASE use this section because this is where a lot of ambiguities are resolved, (and if you lose points its usually here)... Ie what do you mean by an employee, what do you mean by "reasonable hours"... Many times the definition section is the LAST section you write. Avoid or Don't define words in the body of the contract its simpler to do it in this section.
Section Three: Will be a DUTY section, this outlines the duties of the parties to the contract... What they EACH have to do. I will expect that the contract is drafted from YOUR perspective.. ie If you are the employer of a babysitter or something the terms should favor you....
Section Four: Will be a RIGHTS section. Rights are items that are protected for each party. An example might be in a landlord contract the right of privacy to the Tennant subject to the duty of the landlord to maintain and care for the property ect.
Section Five: Will be a Covenant (promise) section. This section details any of the underlying promises or assumptions being made by the parties. Say I am getting a small business loan to operate a law firm. I suspect the loan agreement would have a duty for me to maintain an active law license in the state of PA, it would also have a Covenant that at all times in this contract and for a period of a year prior to the contract I avow that I am a licensed attorney in PA... Think about what promises were essential in you making the contract... Your babysitter is not a registered sex offender ect.
Section Six: Will be a breach section... What are your remedies if the other side breaches (or if you breach) Again draft it from your perspective. If, from the landlords perspective, the tenant breaches the lease all unpaid rents will become immediately due and payable, the tenant shall also be responsible for any legal fees paid for by the landlord in enforcing a breach, ect ect.... In this kind of example you would want to limit the remedies available to the tenant. If the landlord breaches the contract notice of such deficiency must be given to the landlord and the landlord has 2 weeks to remedy said breach... Again should be in favor of your side and limiting to the other.
PART TWO: THE EXPLANATION 15%:
When the Contract is completed, on a new page you will explain to me why you set it up the way you did, and included the provisions that you did and what they are designed to do....
The first item in this section should be... I chose to design this contract to solve the problem of.... Then maybe a sentence or two describing the problem... There is this one roommate who... or in my relationship I always have to pay for the dates... Describe in brief the problem and then your solution based on what you designed in the contract.
For example let's say you do a "housemate cleaning duties contract" and you include a provision that "that roommate "Adam" is solely responsible for the upkeep of their own bedroom and no other roommate can enter said room without permission." However, in the event of a violation of (some other clause) the other roommates can inform the landlord who may then enter roommate's room. Your explanation might be, there are some reasons that it may be important to get access to the roommates room such as...... if your roommate is letting food rot in his room and smelling up the rest of the house and making a health hazard... (Note your contract should have a clause covering such types of situations) i.e. when you design your contract try and THINK of the possible rules and exceptions and justify why you wrote the rule the way you did in this portion of the paper... A rule that says roommate Adam is in charge of cleaning roommate Adam's bedroom is to protect the privacy of roommate "Adam", but under certain listed conditions such privacy should be waived to protect the safety and welfare of the other roommates... those conditions are listed under provision...