You need to view the terms of the contract as part of the <i>pay &#x2F; benefits &#x2F; conditions</i> package that you consider before you take a job.<p>Very few people would accept a job before they found out what salary was on offer, and so you shouldn&#x27;t accept a job before you&#x27;ve read the contract. It&#x27;s all part of the same thing: &quot;We will give you <i>this much money</i>, in return for you doing these things ...&quot;<p>If you&#x27;ve been looking for work for a while and you&#x27;ve only received 1 offer then you&#x27;ll probably accept it even if it pays less than you were hoping for, or if the contract has clauses you don&#x27;t like. You take the best that you can get.<p>But if you&#x27;ve got a number of offers (or reasonably expect to have a number of offers) then you are probably willing to turn down a job (or negotiate) over salary, and you should do the same over contractual clauses.<p>If someone verbally offers you a job with a salary you&#x27;re happy to take, it&#x27;s perfectly reasonable to say &quot;That all sounds fine, and I&#x27;ll be happy to respond formally once I&#x27;ve had a chance to read a copy of the contract&quot;, but don&#x27;t accept the job until you&#x27;ve received and read the contract, because <i>that</i> is the thing that you&#x27;re actually agreeing to.