Promptly

Negotiation Anatomy™ Go Premium Walk-away | Escalation | Algorithm | Heuristic | subject matter expert | Operationalisation | Playbook | Smart contract | Dead horse | Knife fight | 7 wastes | Cruddy legal advice Index: Click ᐅ to expand: Negotiation Negotiation hacks Contract Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

Where an obligation is expressed be performable “immediately”, do we lose anything if we yielding in favour of “as soon as reasonably practicable”? Chicken lickens may be aghast, but your old contrarian pal says no.

In the event that Party A makes any material changes to its investment policies it shall be obligated to immediately {{{2}}}as soon as reasonably practicable notify Party B.

What do we think immediately even means, folks? Do we expect poor benighted Party A to be in fundamental breach should it fail at the instant — judged by some kind of atomic click — that the alteration to said investment policy is formally approved?

No? Then within what period does counts as “immediate”?

You might think Party B needs a reasonable amount of time to collect itself, get back to the office, take its rolodex out of the drawer and find its broker’s number, clear its throat and wait for the broker to pick up the line. If so, you might ask yourself just how different that sense of “immediately” is to “as soon as reasonably practicable”.

Not very, is your correspondent’s opinion.

See also

• The difference between practical and practicable.
• As soon as possible but in any event not later than