Contract law: was there actually an agreement?
Identify offer, acceptance, consideration, intention, certainty and the parties to an agreement.
Learn
Contract disputes often begin with formation: what exactly was offered, what was accepted, what each side promised or provided, whether the arrangement was intended to have legal effect, and whether the terms are sufficiently certain. Contracts can be written, oral or formed through conduct. A wet-ink signature is not a universal requirement. A witness is not generally what creates the contract either, but a witness, recording, email, invoice, payment trail or other contemporaneous record can make the agreement and its terms much easier to prove. Some transactions have special statutory formality requirements, so always check the governing law.
See it
An invoice, email chain, signed document and later conduct may all matter when working out what agreement was made.
Try it
For a sample agreement, identify the parties, offer, acceptance, consideration, key terms, variations and evidence of each.
Complete the mission
Create a contract-formation checklist and test it against a real or fictional agreement.