What role the attorney?

Q. We’ve been interviewing architects and contractors for a large amount of work to our home. Because of the costs, we plan to have an attorney write the contract, but the architect and the contractor don’t feel comfortable and want their own version. My attorney says to find someone else who will follow the contracts he writes. What do you suggest?

A. I’m not an attorney, but I suggest getting the attorney, contractor and architect together and hashing out the real issues. Everyone wants to have it their way, and negotiation may resolve the differences. Just remember that a good negotiation is one in which each party is equally unhappy. Nobody gets everything they want.

Without knowing what specific differences the architect, contractor and attorney have, I can only imagine that each party wants a realistic, reasonable approach to the project, and I’ve seen many attorneys listen and suggest language that works, to some extent, for each. Too often, however, I find wording in contracts favoring or protecting one party more than another or unfairly exposing someone.

Time invested to educate the owner and attorney to real circumstances has helped to avoid language that’s too broad. For example, some contracts make it appear that the contractor has design responsibilities or that the architect has construction responsibilities. The fact is that the contractor isn’t a licensed designer, and in most cases the architect has no license to be the construction company. You’d be surprised how often I’ve seen, when providing testimony in court, a judge, both attorneys, insurance company attorneys and a jury confused into believing that the architect builds buildings or that the contractor had design knowledge.

We’d all like to think that we’re so versatile that we can design or build, but roles must be clearly defined and understood. It’s also important to take into account that a set of construction plans should show enough information to illustrate the expected outcome of the project. Construction plans don’t give a contractor step-by-step instructions.