Go here to see Top Ten Tips in Drafting and Negotiating International Contracts, co-authored by me and René Mario Scherr, Tetra Pak’s Regional General Counsel, South Asia, East Asia & Oceania. If that link doesn’t work for you, go here for a PDF. You’re welcome.
I met René about seven years ago, at one of my seminars. We’ve kept in touch since then; I even managed to have dinner with him in Bangkok. I’ve found him a valuable resource on international practice in general and Asia in particular.
You say: “If using just English raises concerns, have the parties waive the right to claim the contract is invalid because it’s in English…” I don’t see how that helps you if the jurisdiction doesn’t recognize or enforce English-language contracts.
Your comment about how foreigners drafting in English often pad contracts with obscure–and in my experience sometimes unintelligible–archaisms, terms of art, inappropriate concepts, and ungrammatical and otherwise hard-to-parse phrasing is quite valid. Do you know of any diplomatic way to point this out to a counter-party so that rewording the contract won’t offend?
You’re right, but it can be unclear exactly where things stand, with Indonesia being a good example of that. In such circumstances,
you do what you can to mitigate the risk.