Before anyone argues about breach, damages or terms, there is a prior question: did these parties ever actually reach an agreement? Offer and acceptance is the framework solicitors use to answer it. Whether you are advising a client who thinks they bought something, or one who insists they never committed, you need to pinpoint the precise moment — if any — that a deal was struck. This is the foundation everything else in contract rests on.
The lesson builds the framework step by step, then applies it to the situations that cause real trouble in practice.
- The Framework — the logical sequence for finding agreement, the objective test, and bilateral versus unilateral contracts.
- Offer and Invitation to Treat — what makes a genuine offer, and how to tell it apart from an invitation to negotiate.
- Counter-Offers and Termination — how counter-offers, rejection, revocation and lapse can end an offer before it is accepted.
- Acceptance — the mirror image rule, acceptance by conduct, and why silence usually won't do.
- Communication of Acceptance and the Postal Rule — when acceptance takes effect, and the famous exception for the post.
- Specific Contexts and Certainty — auctions, tenders, the battle of the forms, 'subject to contract', and agreements too uncertain to bind.