The short answer: yes, you can
English law is refreshingly relaxed about how a contract is made. With a handful of exceptions - land, guarantees, a few consumer situations - there is no requirement for a lawyer, no requirement for a template, often no requirement for it to be written down at all. Offer, acceptance, an intention to be bound and something of value changing hands, and you have a contract. A verbal agreement can be binding. So can an exchange of emails, or a signed page you wrote yourself.
So if the question is "can I write my own contract", or "do I need a solicitor to write a contract", the honest answer is no, you do not need one to make it valid. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. The interesting part starts one step later.
"Valid" and "protects you" are not the same thing
A contract can be perfectly valid and still be a bad contract - for you. Validity just means it counts. Whether it protects you is a separate question entirely, and it is the one that costs money.
A home-made or template contract usually does the easy 80%. It names the parties, describes the work, states the price. That part is genuinely simple, and if nothing ever goes wrong you will never notice what is missing. The trouble is the other 20% - the clauses nobody thinks about until they need them, because they only exist for the day things go wrong.
A contract earns its keep on its worst day, not its best. The clauses you skip are the ones you would have leaned on.
What templates and AI actually give you
Online templates and AI drafting tools are genuinely useful, and they are not going away. They are also where most of the quiet danger lives, for a specific reason: they produce something that looks finished. A polished document with numbered clauses feels like a solved problem, which is exactly when you stop reading carefully.
Two things they cannot do for you:
- Know your deal. A template is written for the average of everyone. Your risk is in the specifics - this customer, this payment term, this thing that would sink you if it went wrong - and the average document has no idea what those are.
- Choose what to leave out. Good drafting is as much about what you decline to agree to as what you include. A template gives you a pile of standard clauses; it cannot tell you which one quietly signs away something you needed to keep.
An AI draft is a fast, confident junior who has never seen your business and never carries the risk. Useful for a first pass. Not the thing you sign.
Where a DIY contract actually costs you
Here is the pattern, and it is almost always the same. The home-made contract is signed, everyone is happy, and it sits in a drawer for a year while the relationship works fine. Then something breaks - a late payment, a missed delivery, a fallout - and for the first time everyone reads the contract properly.
That is when the gaps surface. No clear termination right, so you cannot cleanly get out. No limit on liability, so a small mistake carries an unlimited bill. A "reasonable endeavours" nobody defined. A payment term that turns out to mean something you did not intend. The saving on drafting is real, but it was a loan, not a gift - and the dispute is where it gets called in, with interest.
The sensible middle ground
None of this means every contract needs a lawyer from scratch. That would be its own kind of waste. The honest answer for most businesses sits in the middle:
- Draft the routine, low-stakes stuff yourself, or from a decent template, and get on with running your business.
- For anything that actually matters - a key customer, real money, a commitment you would struggle to walk away from - draft it yourself if you like, then have it checked before you sign.
- Treat a review as cheap insurance. Having a lawyer read and fix a contract you have drafted is a fraction of the cost of full drafting, and a far smaller fraction of the cost of the dispute it prevents.
That is the version that respects both your money and your risk - do the work you can, get a second pair of eyes on the bit that would hurt.
Frequently asked questions
Can I legally write my own contract?
Yes. In the UK there is generally no requirement to use a solicitor, a template or even a written document to form a valid contract - offer, acceptance, intention to be bound and something of value are enough. A few situations (land, guarantees, some consumer contracts) have formal requirements, but everyday commercial agreements do not.
Are online or template contracts legally binding?
Yes, a template or online contract is as legally binding as any other, provided the basic ingredients of a contract are present. Being binding is not the issue - the issue is whether the wording actually protects you, which a generic template cannot guarantee because it was not written for your deal.
Do I need a solicitor to write a contract?
Not to make it valid. You may want one to make it safe. The value of legal input is not in getting a document to exist - templates and AI do that - but in the clauses that decide what happens when the deal goes wrong, and in spotting what a standard document quietly signs away.
Is it cheaper to write my own contract?
At signing, yes. Over the life of the contract, often not - the saving is really deferred cost that surfaces in a dispute, when a missing or mis-worded clause proves expensive. Having a self-drafted contract reviewed is a low-cost middle path: far less than full drafting, far safer than signing unchecked.
Drafted something yourself? Have it checked.
Silva reviews and drafts commercial contracts for businesses every day - including a quick, fixed sanity-check on a contract you have written or pulled from a template. Send it over and we will tell you what it actually commits you to, and what to fix before you sign.