Standard Form

1. A form of agreement or document which has been approved for use by an institution such as a bank or a law firm as a starting point from which to begin creation of an agreement or document for a new transaction. It is important as a matter of system management and document quality control that the Standard Form be marked or indexed to show its origin and approval date. Standard Forms should be periodically reviewed and updated to reflect changes in the law. Often an institutional actor is reluctant to make any negotiated changes to the terms of its standard form documents. A person may claim that 'we never change our standard forms' but this is usually false unless you are a consumer or a very small business. A more accurate negotiating ploy is to state that the Standard Form is rarely changed, that the person does not have the authority to do so, but if it is a really important deal point, they will run the request for a change up the chain of command. This usually is sufficient to kill the request for a negotiated change.

Copyright (c) 2002-2019 William H. Widen. All rights reserved.  ^ Page Top ^