The formation of contracts feature in all areas of our lives. Every day we unconsciously enter into a variety of contracts: we travel by bus or rail, we purchase goods and accept services and we carry out duties regulated by contracts of employment. Contracts are so prevalent that the ordinary man or woman in the street does not realize the legal complexities of the transaction into which they are entering. As lawyers are aware, these transactions are not as legally simple as their everyday nature suggests. We require evidence of a consensus in item, or a meeting of the minds, achieved by a clear and unambiguous offer and an unqualified acceptance of that offer. We have developed special rules to allow us to determine what the exact terms of the contract are, when it was formed and where it is governed

The Internet is the world’s fastest growing commercial market place. Estimates of its growth show unprecedented development. Recent figures from the Department of Trade and Industry put the current value of worldwide electronic commerce at US $12 bn per annum with an estimated value of US $350-500bn by 2002. 2 Even the DTI’s most conservative estimate suggests a growth in e-commerce of over 2,900 per cent in four years. At the heart of this development is the ability to contract electronically. The question how, when and where contracts are formed over the Internet is no longer academic, it is an important commercial consideration. We will find in a few years that we enter into contracts over the Internet as freely, and with as little thought, as we currently do in a bookshop or a café. As lawyers though we must ask the same questions of these new electronic contracts as we currently ask of traditional contracts: when are they formed, were are they governed and what are the terms of the contract? These three questions will be revisited throughout this chapter, as the WWW of When, Where and What will prove to be increasingly important for the development of e-commerce.