Webinar Replay
Click here to download a PDF copy of the presentation slides
On Thursday 11 November 2021, we hosted the Russell Kennedy Disability, Social and Community Services, Health Webinar - Doing away with the fine print: better consumer contracts. This webinar was aimed at CEOs, Executive/General Managers, Contract Managers from NDIS providers, health organisations and others who provide care to the vulnerable in our community.
Simple contracts help to engage consumers as they choose providers, spend funds and participate in community programs. They help to balance legal, commercial and operational risks.
The intention of drafting plain-English consumer contracts is to remove legal jargon. Despite this, we regularly encounter organisations (including in the disability, social and community sectors and health sectors) that use lengthy consumer contracts. We also regularly encounter organisations that don’t bother with consumer contracts.
So, why do we do it? Vulnerable consumers benefit most from simple contracts so they genuinely understand the deal. Providers have ethical and moral obligations to get genuine agreement. However, longer and more comprehensive contracts are often used because organisations want to minimise risk. The rationale goes that the longer and more detailed a contract is, the more an organisation is protected if an issue arises. These competing objectives need to be balanced.
This webinar dived into the benefits that organisations and their consumers can gain from simplified contracts. We discussed the process from idea to rollout and showed you how to improve and present contracts.
This webinar covered:
- How plain-English contracts will benefit your organisation
- Framework for developing simple contracts
- Examples of how you can minimise contractual disputes
- Simplifying consumers' service experience to minimise confusion, particularly for consumers from non-English speaking backgrounds
- Your obligations under the Australian Consumer Law – are you complying?
The webinar will help you understand the practical and strategical reasons to adopt a plain-language approach to consumer contracting. Our presenters discussed how this can be done with skill and care to ensure organisations remain fully protected when simplifying their consumer-facing documents.
Presenting this webinar was Jonathan Teh, Principal and Rebecca Olle, Associate from Russell Kennedy's Corporate & Commercial team.
How we can help
For more information on anything covered in this webinar please contact Jonathan Teh or Rebecca Olle from our Corporate & Commercial team.
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