Technology Contracts.

Start with five areas vendors' standard paper is drafted to minimise, not clarify: the service-level commitment, including how availability is measured and whether service credits are proportionate to actual business impact; the liability cap, and whether it bears any relation to what a data breach or extended outage would actually cost you; data processing terms, including whether a proper Data Processing Addendum is included or needs to be added; ownership of any custom configuration or integration work; and exit terms — transition assistance, data export rights and a defined off-boarding period. Most SaaS agreements are negotiable on these points even when presented as non-negotiable "standard terms," particularly for contracts of meaningful commercial value.

Yes, if the provider processes any personal data on your behalf — which covers the great majority of cloud and SaaS relationships. Under the GDPR, a controller (your business) is legally required to have a written agreement with any processor (the vendor) that sets out the subject matter and duration of processing, the vendor's obligations, sub-processor controls, data security measures and breach notification duties. This is not a courtesy document — its absence is a compliance failure that a regulator or an auditor will flag. Many vendors offer a standard DPA as an add-on or embedded addendum; where one is not offered, it needs to be negotiated as a condition of signing, not treated as optional.

It depends entirely on what the contract says, and vendor standard terms frequently default ownership to the vendor even where the client commissioned and paid for bespoke work. Without an explicit IP assignment or licence-back clause covering custom integrations, API connectors or configuration work, the business that paid for the development may find it does not actually own — or even have an unrestricted right to keep using — the very thing it commissioned. This becomes a serious problem if the vendor relationship ends, since work you assumed was yours may not be portable to a replacement vendor. We make sure ownership or licence terms for any bespoke work are addressed explicitly, not left to a vendor's default position.

That depends on what remedies the contract actually provides, which is precisely why the SLA needs to be reviewed before signing rather than after a failure occurs. Well-drafted SLAs specify measurable service credits tied to the severity and duration of the failure, a right to escalate or terminate after repeated or severe breaches, and — for genuinely critical services — a liability carve-out so the vendor's standard liability cap does not also apply to SLA failures. Many standard SLAs offer only modest service credits as the sole remedy, with no escalation or termination right attached, which leaves a business with no real leverage when the failure actually matters. We negotiate these remedies upfront so they are enforceable when needed, not aspirational.

Yes — this is a routine part of the practice. A large share of global cloud, SaaS and technology vendor agreements are governed by English law, or by the law of a US state with an English-law-trained lawyer handling the negotiation, and dual qualification in England & Wales alongside Greece means these contracts are reviewed and negotiated directly, without a referral to a second firm or a second round of instructions. Where a contract sits across both Greek regulatory requirements — data protection, sector-specific rules — and a foreign governing law, both angles are covered under a single instruction.