Always do a deal sheet before moving on to a contract. A deal sheet permits you to maintain step-by-step control through the deal formulation and negotiation process. Keep it to a single bulleted page, but with enough detail so you can hand it over to the other side to convert into a contract without risk of their lawyer adding unreasonable provisions to it. Here is how you do it. 1, Identify all the agreed issues which are unlikely to be second guessed by the other side’s lawyers, give these short shrift, 2, Identify all issues that the other side’s lawyers will likely bring up, address them in detail but as business issues, with no wriggle room, (get your lawyer to help but keep it in business language) 3, initial the non-binding deal sheet, 4, when the other side’s lawyer comes in and starts asking for unacceptable provisions at no additional cost, tell him what he wants has already been negotiated as part of the business deal, but he can have whatever he wants, it just won’t be free and he will have to cost justify what he wants to his client.