What Do Corporate Lawyers Do As It Relates To Contract Law?

What do corporate lawyers do as it relates to contract law? As you can imagine, corporations deal with contract issues all the time because that’s generally how business is done between entities and sometimes between individuals and corporations.
    Contract review, contract drafting is a very important function of a corporate lawyer. The issues that can arise deal with the questions of liability, of who is going to be responsible for certain actions under a contract, which party will have to provide insurance.
    If you’re dealing with corporations who are outside of Colorado or in a foreign jurisdiction, there are very important areas that need to be addressed. Including what’s called choice of law, choice of venue, choice of jurisdiction, whether if there’s a dispute between the parties to the contract, it will be resolved within Colorado by our courts or in another state or perhaps in a foreign country. Very significant issues to deal with.
    There are many different questions that can arise in a contract issue. One issue that we deal with regularly is when a corporation signs a contract with an individual, is that person really an independent contractor or will the State of Colorado and the federal government actually deem them to be an employee so that the employer was supposed to provide workers’ comp insurance, unemployment insurance, and do standard deductions from payroll.
    That is a very significant issue in Colorado right now. The State Department of Labor is auditing companies under what’s called a mis-classification theory, looking for companies that have mis-classified people as independent contractors when the state believes that they should in fact be treated as employees. This is a source of significant potential liability for corporate clients in Colorado and frankly all around the country right now.