Commercial Contract Lawyers in Switzerland

Usually a review, and it is the cheaper answer. You get a report on the clauses that carry real consequence — liability, IP, term and termination, payment — an assessment of how the balance sits for your side, and a read on whether the terms sit inside market range, which is what tells you whether pushing back is realistic. A rewrite only pays off when the document is the wrong instrument for the deal, or when it is your own template and you will sign it a hundred more times. We tell you which case you are in before you commit to either.

Nothing obliges you to have them. What they buy you is a set of rules built around how you actually sell, in place of defaults that were not written with your business in mind — and the ability to onboard a customer without negotiating a bespoke contract first. The core of a usable set: how the contract begins and ends, how you get paid, a cap on what you can be liable for, who owns what, and a route to change the terms when your product changes. Consumer sales add returns and warranties; a platform adds rules for user content and moderation. German AGB law and EU consumer rules diverge enough from Swiss law that we scope those separately.

Not automatically you. Without an explicit clause, rights in the code or the research output can stay with the party that created them, and that is the single most expensive gap we see in build contracts. The fix is contractual: assign or licence the code and every right attached to it, copyright and patents alike, to whichever side you agreed should hold it; say what happens to improvements made later; and keep confidentiality running both during the engagement and after it ends. Research collaborations need a second look, because a public institution is often limited by law in what it may sign away.

Your red lines, and what you are genuinely willing to give. Then the remuneration structure, which is the point most teams underestimate: a commission or referral model that aligns both sides does more for the relationship than any obligation you can draft. After that come exclusivity, territory, sales targets, who owns co-developed products, and what termination looks like when it stops working. Time spent on the hard points before signature is not lost, it is the cheapest dispute prevention available.

Reuse is the point. We draft your first partnership, reseller or development agreement so it works as a template, and hand it over with a short manual: what your team can safely change, what needs a second look, and which clauses should never move. Your first agreement becomes an asset your team onboards the next partner with, instead of a document you buy again every quarter.

Almost everything in this area has a fixed price, agreed in writing before we begin. Reviewing someone else's paper is priced separately and costs less; genuinely open-ended work, such as a live negotiation, runs on pre-paid hours instead.