Notice That Runs Both Ways
Notice in a commercial engagement protects both sides from an abrupt stop and nothing more, and the longer it gets the less it resembles commercial supply.
Reads as a businessReads as employmentCuts both waysDepends where you are
Four factors, and no total. Every bar is the same length: the side is the claim, the size is not. Nothing here was decided; it accumulated, which is how most of these arrangements change.
Notice in a commercial engagement protects both sides from an abrupt stop and does nothing else. It carries no entitlements, no process, and no obligation to give reasons.
The practical issue in “Notice That Runs Both Ways” becomes clearer when expectations and evidence are visible to both sides. Used for mouse jiggler detection, review the platform at its source can add time and project context, provided the purpose is disclosed, access is limited and every consequential interpretation receives human review.
It is also the term buyers most often want to lengthen, usually because they are afraid of losing somebody, and lengthening it has effects they have not considered.
For another operational perspective on “Notice That Runs Both Ways”, consult Scrum.org learning resources. Compare it with the actual statement of work, jurisdiction and supplier relationship before adopting a general practice.
What it is for
Time to arrange something else. For you, to find another supplier or reallocate work. For them, to find other income.
That is the entire function, and the right length is however long those things actually take in your trade.
Why buyers want it longer
Because a supplier leaving suddenly is expensive, and notice feels like the instrument that prevents it.
It mostly does not. A supplier who wants to leave and faces three months' notice will often negotiate their way out, work the notice badly, or simply go. Notice is a commercial term, not a leash.
What long notice starts to look like
A three-month mutual notice period on an engagement that has run for years, with a full working week and no other clients, is one of several things that together describe a relationship nobody would call occasional supply.
It is a small factor on its own. In combination with the others in this section it stops being small.
Symmetry, which is the thing to check
Notice that is long for them and short for you is a position of dominance that reads badly, and in several places is directly challengeable.
Mutual notice of the same length is both fairer and considerably easier to defend. A business that wants three months of protection should be willing to give three months of commitment.
Guaranteed work during notice
The question that is usually unanswered. If you give notice, are they entitled to work during it, or to payment in place of it, or to nothing?
Each answer is legitimate and they are very different commercially. A notice period with no obligation to provide work is, from the supplier's side, almost no protection at all.
The engagement with no notice at all
Common and perfectly workable for short defined pieces. The work is done, the invoice is paid, and nobody needs a termination mechanism.
It becomes a problem only when the short piece turns into two years, at which point there is no agreed way to stop and both sides are improvising at the worst moment.
Payment in lieu
Available commercially and worth stating explicitly if you want it. Without it, ending immediately is a breach whatever you pay.
The useful form is a term saying that either side may end immediately on payment of the notice period. That gives you the ability to stop cleanly, which is occasionally necessary, without converting it into a dispute.
Notice as a substitute for the thing you actually want
Buyers who want long notice usually want continuity, and notice is a poor instrument for continuity.
The things that actually produce it are: a rate that is worth having, work that is interesting, prompt payment, documentation so that departure is survivable, and a second supplier so that it is not catastrophic. All of those are within your control and none of them is a restriction on anybody.
What a supplier reads into it
Worth remembering that notice is negotiated at the start, when both sides are optimistic, and that what you ask for says something.
A buyer who opens with a short, mutual, clearly drafted notice term reads as somebody who has done this before. One who asks for three months from the supplier and two weeks for themselves reads as somebody to be careful with, and good suppliers have the option of being careful elsewhere.
Notice during a defined piece of work
A distinction that frequently goes unmade. Ending an open arrangement and ending part-way through a specific piece of work are different situations, and a single notice clause covering both usually serves neither well.
For defined work, the more useful mechanism is what happens to the part-finished thing: whether it is handed over, what is paid for it, and in what state. Businesses that have a notice period and no answer to those questions have the wrong half of the term.
The term to write
For most engagements, something close to this:
Either party may end this engagement on thirty days' written notice, or immediately on payment of the equivalent. Work in progress at the date of ending is to be handed over in a usable state and paid for.
Four lines. Written at the start, it removes every improvisation described above, and it is one of the few things in this collection that costs nothing at all to get right.