Lawyers love to negotiate (and bill hours) by changing words and lines in linear text. This works perfectly for deals that are standard and very well understood. The price of a product, the distribution commission, the number of shares.

When the business or the business model is a bit unusual, things go wrong. The 2 parties, and their lawyers (that’s 4 entities) can easily get confused. People think they understand, but they do not.

The solution: negotiate based on a sketch or a slide layout and use an imaginative case example with some made up, but realistic numbers. It is easy to refer to the year 3 sales redistribution commission as “those $42k”. Everyone knows what you are talking about.

After all this, the deal can be put in writing.