What makes up a Contract Review Workflow?

“We’d like to extend you an offer,” your recruiter gives a verbal of the compensation, 35 pages across 5 documents follow via email, what should you do next?

This week’s blog post covers the the workflow of personal contract review, how it’s broken, and what we’re doing to fix it.

Today’s Broken Workflow: “I couldn’t understand it, so I just signed it.”

After surveying our user community, it was obvious that everyone from new grads to C-suites didn’t feel comfortable reading their own contracts. The most popular word users used to describe contract review was “apprehension”. Their best case scenario was hoping for the best, which unfortunately leaves them unprepared for everything else.

The Ask Ginkgo Workflow: Understand, Contextualize, Negotiate

It’s common for people to negotiate the ‘numbers’, understanding their compensation between cash, bonuses, and potential equity, contextualizing against industry norms, and negotiating the best outcome based on their expectations. We believe the same process should apply to the fine print:

1. Understand: After uploading your contract to Ask Ginkgo, our review platform processes each clause to extract the most important terms for you to know into a 1-pager.

2. Contextualize: Each term is evaluated based on data-driven industry trends and color-coded for whether it’s standard, unfavorable, or favorable.

3. Negotiate: The industry ranges for each term are shared, as well as clarifying questions applicable for risky open-ended terms. While we aren’t your lawyers, we do believe in providing information for you to be your own best advocate.
   
   

Example: Post Termination Exercise Period

First, let’s understand the following clause:

Ask Ginkgo provides the output in an easy to read sentence, and marks in yellow terms that are common but could be negotiated to be more favorable.

Given the following industry ranges, where up to 90 days is standard, and in rare cases, up to 10 years is possible, this information can be used to negotiate with potential employers for more favorable terms.

I didn’t realize Post Termination Exercise was negotiable, and have gotten over a dozen offers in the past! Ask Ginkgo taught me about industry trends I wasn’t aware of.

- Software Engineer, FAANG Company

For advocacy and beyond!
The Ask Ginkgo Team