Name: Legal English Vocabulary VV 27 - Contract Law (Lesson 2) | Business English Vocabulary
Uploaded: 2026-01-20T17:33:51.000Z
Duration: 11 min 26 s
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You're watching video vocab by businessenglishpod.com in our last episode, we looked at some of the basic principles of contracts.

Today, we'll focus on specific terms and language found in contracts.

In contract negotiations, once you come to terms with the other party, you can ratify the agreement.

During this negotiation, the parties may make certain statements without prejudice.

When everyone is satisfied, the contract is signed and becomes legally binding.

The exact terms written into the contract or discussed during negotiation are express terms.

There may also be implied terms that are not directly stated but still govern the contract.

The conditions and warranties of a contract are laid out in carefully written clauses.

Legal responsibility or liability is spelled out very clearly in a contract.

Parties may be joint and severally liable, or they may enjoy limited liability.

A contract may also include exclusion clauses to remove a party from legal responsibility in certain circumstances.

Now let's look at the vocabulary in more detail with some definitions and examples.

Terms to Come to Terms the terms of a contract are the detailed points that the parties are agreeing to.

When parties come to terms, they are reaching agreement on all of these detailed points.

After a lengthy negotiation process, we finally came to terms on a deal.

Ratify To Ratify an agreement when the parties agree to a contract, they must ratify the agreement.

This normally means officially accepting the contract by signing a paper version.

The signatures of both parties are required to ratify the agreement.

Without prejudice Sometimes parties will state or write things in a negotiation that they do not want to be part of the agreement.

We can say that these statements are made without prejudice and they cannot be used as evidence in legal cases.

The statement was made without prejudice, so it could not be used in court.

Legally Binding Legally Binding if a contract is legally binding, it means it is valid under the law.

The parties are bound to the contract and must fulfill their obligations.

The contract was not legally binding because it wasn't signed by both parties.

Express terms, Implied terms, conditions, obligations and other points stated directly in a contract are called express terms.

Sometimes a contract includes terms that are not expressed directly in written form.

These are implied terms and they are usually more difficult to define than express terms.

The project schedule was laid out according to the express terms of the contract.

Conditions Conditions the most important terms of a contract are called conditions.

If a condition is not met, the contract is broken or breached.

The lawyer worded the conditions of the contract very carefully.

Warranty Warranties Warranties are less important terms of a contract.

Breaking a warranty does not normally mean the contract has been breached.

Clause Clauses the terms of a contract are written in sections called clauses.

There are certain types of clauses such as exemption clauses and non compete clauses which are commonly found in contracts.

I read each and every clause of my employment contract very carefully.

Liability Liability Liability refers to legal responsibility.

If a party breaks a contract or does not fulfill its duties, that party is liable.

The judge decided liability rested with the supplier because they failed to deliver.

Joint and Severally Liable if more than one person or business enters a contract as partners, they may be joint and severally liable.

This means that each person or business is individually responsible for the entire contract.

Because the contractors were joint and severally liable, they all had to pay.

Limited Liability if one party in a contract is a limited company, then that company's owners enjoy limited liability.

The company enjoyed limited liability so its director's assets were protected.

Exclusion Clause Exclusion Clauses A party's liability may be limited in certain situations by exclusion clauses.

These clauses clearly state that a party is not responsible if certain things happen.

I ask my lawyer to insert several exclusion clauses to reduce my risk.

Now it's your turn to practice some of the words we've studied in this lesson.

In a moment, you'll hear a series of sentences with a word replaced with a beep.

Repeat each sentence, including the missing word.

For example, if you hear I refuse to ratify the without my lawyers present.

I refuse to ratify the agreement without my lawyers present.

We'll play the correct answer after each question.

With so many express the contract was 50 pages.

With so many express terms, the contract was 50 pages.

The partners were joint and severally under the contract.

The partners were joint and severally liable under the contract.

A special exclusion removed us from some responsibilities.

A special exclusion clause removed us from some responsibilities.

The contract became legally as soon as it was signed.

The contract became legally binding as soon as it was signed.

That's all for this episode of Video Vocab, the final part of our series on contract law.

Be sure to check out our website at www.videovocab.tv for more videos on business English vocabulary.

Thanks for watching and see you again soon.