Think different about China Letters of Intent and Memoranda of Understanding. Please.

China LOI and MOU: Don’t Let Them Happen to You

At least once a month, an American or sometimes a British company will come to one of our China attorneys after having spent considerable time negotiating a complex transaction with a Chinese company. They then show us a Letter of Intent (LOI) or a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that sets out in great detail the

China LAwyers

China Service of Process Under the Hague Convention

Service of Process Companies and Domestic Litigators Should NOT Apply Many years ago, I read an excellent blog post over at the Letters Blogatory blog, Service of Process and the Unauthorized Practice of Law, on how service of process companies frequently mess up to the detriment of their clients. This post also asks whether these

International arbitration

Arbitration In Your International Contracts: Adult Supervision Required.

With sushi restaurants, it’s the yellowfin. With new houses, it’s the windows. With international contracts, it’s the dispute resolution provision. The “it” I am talking about is the one easiest, fastest, most accurate, way to judge whether something is good or not. And the way I judge international contracts is by heading straight to its

Self enforcingInternationalContracts

Self-Enforcing Contracts: A Good Tool for Tough Markets

1. Draft Your Contract for the Applicable Country In How Not to be in China, we wrote about how companies are seeking to diversify their supply chains by moving some or all of their production to other countries. When entering into contracts in these new countries, the first question to ask is whether the new

China manufacturing contracts

Owed a LITTLE Money by Your Chinese Manufacturer? Good Luck with That

For at least a decade, our law firm has probably never gone a week without getting an email from a company that has paid anywhere between $500 and $50,000 for product from a Chinese manufacturer and received either nothing in return or product that clearly is not up to snuff. These days, we are getting

Don't Do it International

International Dispute Resolution Clauses: Context is Everything

1. International Dispute Resolution Clauses Every month or so, a lawyer will write me out of the blue with a “quick question” about a draft contract. One of the most common “quick questions” we get are those asking us to “confirm” that some particular court or arbitration body would make the most sense for such

TedX Orcas Island

Suing Your China Manufacturer for Bad Quality Product

Our international litigation lawyers long ago developed template emails for responding to companies that write us about their China product quality problems. The below is the one we use for U.S. companies that write us with a China product quality problem and the contract provided us is not good at all. Most of the time