Legally Speaking: What Not To Do When Outsourcing Operations

First published in The Royal Gazette, Legally Speaking, November 2022

In the course of my career, I have drafted, negotiated or otherwise provided commercial and legal advice concerning well more than 300 outsourcing contracts of all types.

Whether as inter-company shared service contracts among affiliates or with commercial outsourcing service providers, there are several important contracting mistakes that are pervasive but easily avoided.

When pricing an inter-company outsourcing service agreement with an affiliate, whether as a domestic or cross-border transaction, many clients forget that fair market value pricing is fundamentally premised on a comparison with arms-length commercial outsourcing agreements.