Question:
Hi Jennifer,
I'm changing a few things for my associate - 3rd anniversary of her employment agreement. Do we need a new contract or an amendment?
Thanks,
Dr. U
Answer:
Depends. If you are looking to maintain the construct already afforded and you are changing only certain term(s), such as compensation, generally an amendment will suffice. Now, if you are looking to start tinkering with a few concepts or you generally need a little facelift on terms, I typically look to Amend and Restate - recast the entire contract. I find it to be cleaner in presentation, as opposed to the cut and paste - fragmented presentation of an amendment. Oftentimes and amended and restated actually takes me less time to prepare - so you are not actually saving on legal fees. An amendment presents as a shorter document, but one that must tie in to the underlying employment agreement, and, sometimes, requires more wordsmithing and checks to ensure continuity of terms than just recasting and updating the underlying...
Let's chat on changes, take a quick look at the original, and formulate a plan of action.
