Exercises: Contracts and Legal

⚖️ These exercises are educational. Where they ask you to draft or evaluate contract language, you are practicing a review skill, not producing legal advice. Anything you intend to use in your own business should be reviewed by an attorney in your jurisdiction.

Difficulty guide: ⭐ Foundational (5–10 min) · ⭐⭐ Intermediate (10–20 min) · ⭐⭐⭐ Challenging (20–40 min) · ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Advanced (40+ min)

Part A: Conceptual Understanding ⭐

A.1. Explain what it means that a contract is "a rehearsal of the failure." Give the eight questions the test uses.

A.2. List the twelve clauses. For each, state in one phrase what it must establish.

A.3. Why is "reading for absence" harder than reading for content, and what is the only reliable method?

A.4. Distinguish cancellation, postponement, and force majeure. Give the single most important question each clause must answer.

A.5. Explain why clauses 7 and 8 must be read together, with an example of a contract where each looks fine alone.

A.6. In an indemnification clause, explain the difference between fault-based and proximity-based language, and which you ask for.

A.7. Define without looking back: additional insured, F&B minimum, liquidated damages, assignment, redline.

A.8. Why must a venue contract be negotiated before the client falls in love with the venue?

Part B: Applied Analysis ⭐⭐

B.1. Run the absence audit. On the Wildrye Farm contract in the Project Checkpoint. All seventeen questions, marked ✓ / ~ / ✗. Rank the absences by exposure.

B.2. Rewrite four bad clauses. Propose replacement wording, and for each write the one-sentence ask you would send.

• (a) "Vendor shall use commercially reasonable efforts to perform."
• (b) "Studio reserves the right to assign an alternate photographer at its sole discretion."
• (c) "Client shall indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Vendor from any and all claims arising out of or related to the Event."
• (d) "All payments are non-refundable. Farm is not liable for any failure to perform."

B.3. The postponement matrix. For each of six vendors — venue, caterer, photographer, band, florist, rentals — write the postponement clause you would want, and identify which vendor is most likely to refuse and why.

B.4. Cap arithmetic. A photographer's contract is $5,200. The client has paid a 40% deposit. Compute the recovery under each: (a) cap at amounts paid; (b) cap at contract price; (c) cap at contract price with a remedy clause reimbursing substitute cost up to 150%. Then state which combination of clauses 7 and 8 produces (c).

B.5. Read a venue contract. Using §8.5's table, review this set of provisions and identify the four most consequential problems:

"§2 Venue reserves the right to relocate the Event to a comparable space at its discretion. §4 Food and beverage minimum of $18,000, exclusive of service charge and applicable taxes. §6 Access permitted from 3:00 p.m.; all property removed by midnight. §8 Overtime billed at $1,200 per hour or part thereof. §10 Venue may host concurrent events. §12 A cleaning and damage deposit of $2,000 will be assessed post-event at Venue's sole determination."

B.6. Triage the asks. For each vendor, name the two asks you would make and one you would let go: photographer · caterer · rental company · band · florist · venue.

B.7. The refused ask. A vendor declines your remedy clause. Write (a) the confirming question you send, (b) the note you make in the tracker, and (c) the sentence you say to the client.

Part C: Real-World Application ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

C.1. Audit three real contracts. ⭐⭐⭐ Obtain three real event contracts from different categories. Run the full absence audit on each. Report: absences found, which two you would ask about, and the exact wording you would propose. This is the chapter's primary deliverable.

C.2. Start the clause library. ⭐⭐ Build the document. Populate it with the four clauses drafted in this chapter plus any good wording you found in C.1. Structure it by clause type, and record which vendor category accepted each.

C.3. Your own agreement. ⭐⭐⭐ Draft the core terms of your planner–client agreement against §8.6's table. Then get a quote from an attorney in your jurisdiction to review it, and put the figure in your Chapter 36 budget. Do not use it until it has been reviewed.

C.4. Interview about a failure. ⭐⭐⭐ Ask two working planners: what is the worst contract problem you have had, and what clause would have prevented it? Write it up in 400 words and add whatever wording they suggest to your library.

C.5. Certificate of insurance. ⭐⭐ Obtain a real certificate of insurance (any vendor, any industry). Identify: the insured, the policy limits, the effective dates, and whether and how an additional insured is named. Chapter 9 goes deeper; this is the reading practice.

C.6. The two-ask email. ⭐ Write your template. Then use it on a real contract from C.1 — actually send it if you can, and record the response.

Part D: Synthesis and Critical Thinking ⭐⭐⭐

D.1. Cross-chapter integration. Chapter 2's scope, Chapter 7's non-refundable column, and this chapter's contract review are three views of the same commitment structure. Build a single one-page "commitment register" that a planner could maintain, showing for every vendor: what was agreed, what was paid, what is non-refundable, what happens on postponement, and what remedy exists.

D.2. Critique the two-ask rule. §8.7 says two asks is normal and nine is a reputation. Construct the case that this is the planner protecting their own vendor relationships at the client's expense — that a client paying $60,000 is entitled to every protection available and that a planner declining to ask has put their own network first. Then respond. Where exactly is the conflict of interest, and how would you disclose it?

D.3. The decency problem. In the postponement case, the photographer honored a clause that did not exist, out of decency. Argue that an industry where good actors routinely do the right thing without contractual obligation is a reason not to insist on clauses. Then argue it is the strongest possible reason to insist. Which effect is larger?

D.4. Transfer. Compare an event contract with a contract from a field that has mature standard forms — construction (AIA), film production, or commercial leasing. What do they contain that event contracts do not? Draft the two provisions you would import.

D.5. The enforceability line. §8.8 says never to advise on enforceability. Construct three sentences a planner might reasonably say about a clause, and three they must not. Where exactly is the boundary, and what would you say to a client who asks you directly whether a clause "would hold up"?

Part M: Mixed Practice (Interleaved) ⭐⭐–⭐⭐⭐

M.1. (Ch.6 + Ch.8) A venue's F&B minimum is $18,000 "exclusive of service charge and taxes." The service charge is 22% and tax is 8% on the SC-inclusive base. What does the client actually spend to meet the minimum? Write the sentence you say to them.

M.2. (Ch.7) A contract's cancellation scale retains 75% at 30–89 days. Your client is at day 84 and has paid 40%. What is the exposure, and what do you check first?

M.3. (Ch.5 + Ch.8) A catering contract's guarantee clause requires a final count at −14 days, with additions after that at 150% of the per-head rate. Model the cost of ten late additions at a $148 loaded rate. Then say what you change about your RSVP timeline.

M.4. (Looks like one thing, is another) A vendor's contract has no cancellation clause at all. Is this good for your client, bad, or neutral? Argue all three, then say what you do.

M.5. (Ch.2 + Ch.8) Your scope of service says you will provide "contract review with recommended revisions" for nine vendor categories. A client asks you to also review their pre-nuptial agreement. Answer them.

Part E: Research and Extension ⭐⭐⭐⭐

E.1. Research how force majeure provisions in event contracts changed after 2020 in your market. Find at least three current contracts and compare their force majeure and postponement language to any pre-2020 form you can obtain. What was added? What is still missing?

E.2. Investigate whether wedding vendor contracts in your jurisdiction are subject to any consumer-protection statute — cooling-off periods, disclosure requirements, limits on non-refundable deposits. Write a 700-word brief with sources, and note explicitly where you could not establish an answer. Then have a lawyer tell you what you got wrong.

E.3. Compare event contracting practice in two countries. Where are deposits larger or smaller? Where is postponement standard? Where does consumer law constrain what a vendor may retain? What does the comparison reveal about which features of your own market are legal necessity and which are merely convention? (Chapter 33 will use this.)

Solutions

Selected solutions: appendices/answers-to-selected.md. Clause library starting point: appendices/appendix-d-contract-clause-library.md. Rubrics for open-ended items: instructor-guide/additional-assessments/all-assessments.md.