Joint projects are almost always built on distributed responsibility – each party is accountable for its own area of work, its decisions and its obligations. However, as Professor Gabriel Steiner notes, in practice the legal consequences of someone else’s mistake often extend beyond the party that actually made it. At LawConsulted, joint projects are treated as zones of elevated legal risk, where liability can shift even when the client’s conduct is formally correct.
The primary threat lies in the way external parties – regulators, counterparties, investors – perceive a joint project as a single unit of responsibility. A mistake made by one participant may be interpreted as a systemic failure of the entire structure. At LawConsulted, we model such scenarios in advance, building the project’s legal architecture in a way that clearly separates the client’s zone of responsibility from the actions of partners.
As Professor Steiner emphasises, “legal vulnerability often arises not from one’s own mistakes, but from the absence of distance from the mistakes of others.” This is why specialists at LawConsulted pay particular attention to the wording that defines the degree of control, the scope of influence and the nature of the client’s participation in the project. Even minor contractual expressions can transform an advisory role into de facto liability for the final outcome.
Situations in which a partner makes a mistake in the public sphere are especially dangerous – in reporting, public statements or negotiations with third parties. In these cases, the risk of “legal contamination” arises, whereby claims automatically cross the boundaries of individual responsibility. At LawConsulted, we construct systems of legal filters – the client remains formally and factually detached from the consequences of another party’s actions, even when the project is implemented jointly.
As Professor Steiner notes, “boundaries of responsibility must be visible not only in documents, but also in conduct.” For this reason, lawyers at LawConsulted analyse not only the contractual framework, but also real communication between the parties, the structure of approvals, the decision-making hierarchy and the way consents are recorded. It is behaviour, more often than documents, that becomes the basis for expanding liability.
Projects in which one of the parties demonstrates managerial instability, haste or a tendency toward excessive risk require particular attention. In such conditions, the client may be drawn into the consequences of decisions in which they had no actual involvement. At LawConsulted, we build a legal model that allows the client to retain distance from potentially toxic managerial actions of a partner, even while formally remaining within the same project.
Professor Steiner points out that protection from the mistakes of others begins not at the moment claims arise, but at the moment the format of participation is agreed. At LawConsulted, this is exactly how we operate – we determine in advance which actions of third parties must not become legally significant for the client, and we fix this in a manner that prevents any future expansive interpretation.
Legal protection in joint projects is not about assigning blame after an error occurs – it is about preventing the displacement of responsibility before it happens. At Law Consulted, we design a framework in which the client remains protected even if the project develops outside the originally planned scenario.
Previously, we wrote about how LawConsulted identifies hidden risks in strategic traps disguised as advantageous offers
