Stop 4 of 8 · Weekly
The lease
Rank the lease issues in the order the client cares about, then produce the email to the landlord's counsel and the note the client can actually read.
Why the lease is different from the contract
A services agreement is a document. A commercial lease is a document plus a business plan. The clause that keeps Elena up is rarely the one with the worst legal exposure, it is the one that stops the client trading. A twelve week landlord build-out with no rent abatement is not a legal problem, it is a bakery with no revenue in November.
So the lease review has an extra input the contract review does not: the client's own order of importance, taken from the intake call and put into the prompt.
The three outputs from one read
| Output | Who reads it | Ordered by |
|---|---|---|
| Issues list | Elena | Client priority, then exposure |
| Negotiation email | Landlord's counsel | The three points worth spending on |
| Client note | The client | What it costs them if nothing changes |
All three come from the same upload. Elena writes the priorities into the first prompt and then keeps the chat, so the email and the client note are built from the same facts rather than from a fresh read.
Try this
Attached is the landlord's draft lease. My client's priorities, most important first: [list what the client told you matters]. Build the issues table ranked by those priorities rather than by legal exposure, with a second column showing the exposure rating so I can see where the two disagree. Every row: the issue, what the lease says with section and page, which client priority it touches, and the options open to me with the trade off on each. Do not pick an option, I decide the position. [upload the lease]
From the top three rows of that table, draft the email to the landlord's counsel. Professional, short, no adjectives. For each point: what we need, the proposed language, and one line on why it is reasonable from the landlord's side. Open with one sentence saying we are working toward signature. Ask for a call only if we are apart on two or more of the three. Do not concede anything I have not already marked as a fallback.
Rewrite the same three points for my client, who runs a bakery and has signed one lease before. One page. No legal terms unless you define them in the same sentence. Structure: what I am pushing on, what it costs you if we do not get it, what I expect the landlord to say, and the one decision I need from you this week. Use only what is in the issues table, add no advice of your own, and mark this as a draft for my review.
Read the lease again and list what is missing rather than what is there: every protection a tenant in a multi tenant retail building would normally expect that this document is silent on. One line each, with the risk if it stays silent. Say silent, not unenforceable, and cite nothing.