Archive for March, 2009
“I will recommend you to my business friends in the USA and Europe.”
Francis Ayley, President of Fourth Corner Exchange based in the Pacific Northwest, USA (www.FourthCornerExchange.com) wrote to us a few days ago:
“I commend you on the quality of your legal forms. I have written many business contracts over the years, and the forms I purchased from you really worked well for me, in a small emergency situation where I needed a contract immediately and my usual corporate lawyer was unavailable (out of the country).
“I must have searched twenty other websites before I chose yours. Well laid out, easily accessible, the right information available before I buy. Excellent. Well Done. I will visit again and recommend you to my business friends in the USA and Europe.”
This was especially generous as Francis initially had problems paying for the document he wanted as his purchase coincided with a site outage at Worldpay. He nonetheless was kind enough to find time to compliment us.
Fourth Corner Exchange is a very interesting site where people can exchange goods and services using ‘life dollars’ instead of money – they can instead trade work for work or swap things.
Thanks Francis and best of luck with your enterprise – and stay in touch!
Local Authorities want to abolish jargon in favour of plain English
Councils were told today to cut out 200 jargon words such as “revenue stream”, “stakeholder” and “incentivising” so that ordinary people can understand them. They have compiled a list of words and phrases that councils should eliminate from their vocabulary.
Workers should not “facilitate” they should “help” and instead of “fast-tracking” something they should just “speed it up”
Certain words are so meaningless they can be discarded altogether according to the LGA. The culprits include; contestability, synergies and cascading.
Chairman of the Local Government Association, Councillor Margaret Eaton, said: “The public sector must not hide behind impenetrable jargon and phrases. Why do we have to have ‘coterminous, stakeholder engagement’ when we could just ‘talk to people’ instead?
“Councils have a duty, not only to provide value for money to local people, but also to tell people what they get for the tax they pay. People would be furious if they have no idea of what services their cash is paying for and how they should get to use them.”
Unfortunately, the list shows that when local authorities talk of ‘meaningful consultation’, it does not meant consultation, but ‘talking to people’.
OneIS Happy
oneis.co.uk
Jennifer Smith, co-founder of OneIS (www.oneis.co.uk) contacted ContractStore after hearing about us in Delia Venables’ Internet Newsletter for Lawyers.
OneIS provides a secure, online space for small organisations to store and share all their information. In effect it’s like having an intranet or shared network, without the expense and IT hassle of running your own servers. Clients pay a monthly subscription to store their documents and other information in the application, hosted securely by OneIS.
Jennifer sought a contract giving the terms of service for providing the hosted information management system.
This type of hosted service is becoming increasingly popular, so we were happy to hear from Jennifer and produce a template contract for the catalogue.
Jennifer, who describes herself as being “obsessed with efficiency and improving business through better information management”, told us:
“We needed terms of service for OneIS but I didn’t want to spend the £850+ I was quoted by traditional law firms. So I approached Giles at Contract Store who sorted us out very promptly and professionally for a fraction of the price being quoted by others.
“I’m so pleased to have found your service. I thought getting our terms written would be a horribly lengthy and expensive process, but it has been really quick and easy.
“I have been recommending ContractStore to other startup companies – all of whom would benefit from the cost-effective, no hassle legal services you provide.”
