Realized I was reading NDAs wrong after a 3 hour mediation in Chicago

I spent like 4 years skimming over non-compete clauses in NDAs assuming they were all boilerplate. Then a mediator pointed out a specific phrase buried in section 7 that technically locked me into a 2 year restriction, lol. Now I actually read the whole thing line by line, even the boring parts. Has anyone else missed something obvious in a contract that came back to bite them?

2 comments

2 Comments

kevin_bailey6d ago

Oh man, that's brutal but I get it. In my experience it's easy to get numb to standard looking language and just assume it's fine. Your mileage may vary but I've noticed this same blind spot shows up in all kinds of everyday stuff not just contracts. Like with software terms of service or even warranty paperwork for a new appliance. We just scroll and click agree without really seeing what's there. Take this with a grain of salt but I think the bigger pattern is that we've all been trained to trust the boilerplate and skip the fine print until something bites us. It's a pretty common trap.

jessicaw546d ago

Wait, are you saying you actually sat through a 3 hour mediation over a typo-level clause? I used to think NDAs were all copy-paste too but now I'm starting to see why people hire lawyers for these.