What is a Memorandum of Understanding?

17th June 2026 These legal-sounding documents are often not what they seem * Every so often you will hear of parties that have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). There may be some earnest or even solemn ceremony. The document may look very grand, with legal-sounding phrases in a legal-looking format. To a general onlooker the impression conveyed is that some agreement has been arrived at, which each party intends to be binding on themselves and the other parties. “There is now a Memorandum of Understanding,” someone will say nodding, and wanting you to nod-along too. * But. From an English lawyer’s perspective, a Memorandum of Understanding is invariably intended to not be an agreement in any contractual sense. A MoU can usually be described – even defined -in negative terms: it is an agreement which not intended to have any contractual effects between the parties. (From time-to-time there will be a MoU which has contractual effect, though these are rare and come about mostly…