Steven Widjaja, S.H.

Steven works on technology and commercial deals where the contract may look acceptable at signing but become expensive when something goes wrong.

His strength is pressure-testing the position before the business commits.

He focuses on the terms that can decide whether a valuable deal remains good business after signing: liability, indemnities, data use, intellectual property, service commitments, customer remedies and termination rights.

Steven reads the contract from the other side of the table:

If the customer makes a claim later, where will it attack? If performance slips, which promise becomes dangerous? If third-party technology fails, who carries the consequence? If the relationship stops working, can the business actually get out?

That perspective is particularly useful in enterprise SaaS, AI and digital-platform deals, where a large customer’s bargaining power or broad service expectations can create exposure far beyond the value of the contract itself.

His objective is not to remove every risk.

It is to make sure the business knows which risks it is accepting, which risks should stay with the other party, and which words could become very expensive later.

Selected Experience

Enterprise Terms for Autonomous Agentic AI

Worked on customer-facing terms for an enterprise SaaS product introducing autonomous Agentic AI capable of accessing systems, making decisions and carrying out actions within customer environments.

Steven focused on the commercial pressure points created when increasingly capable AI is sold to enterprise customers:

could a service commitment become a guarantee;
could the provider become responsible for behaviour dependent on third-party technology;
could customer remedies become disproportionate to the value of the service;
could the provider carry responsibility for decisions or environments outside its control; and
could termination rights make the commercial relationship unsafe?

He pressure-tested the terms with one question:

If something goes wrong after deployment, which clause hurts the provider first?

For the business: advanced AI capability could be offered to enterprise customers without allowing the product’s sophistication to become open-ended contractual exposure.

High-Stakes Cross-Border SaaS Negotiation

Supported an Asia-headquartered SaaS principal in negotiating a high-value enterprise contract with a heavily regulated corporate customer, where the customer’s size, bargaining power and compliance demands put substantial pressure on the provider’s position.

Steven focused on the provisions most likely to become expensive after signing: liability, customer remedies, service commitments, data use, third-party technology and termination.

He identified where the customer’s proposed wording could make the provider responsible for risks it did not control or expose it to losses far beyond the economics of the deal.

For the business: the goal was not simply to win a major customer. It was to win the customer without turning valuable revenue into a long-term source of uncontrolled risk.

Contracts Built for the Bad Day

Contracts are easiest to agree when both sides expect everything to work.

The provisions that matter most often reveal themselves later, when performance slips, payment is disputed, technology fails, a customer seeks a remedy or one party wants out.

Steven works on those points before signing, while the business still has leverage to change them.

His work is particularly relevant when:

a major customer sends its own “standard” contract;
liability is far larger than the value of the deal;
service levels or warranties may promise more than the product can reliably deliver;
third-party technology or customer-controlled systems affect performance;
remedies could destroy the economics of the transaction; or
termination rights could trap the business in a relationship that no longer works.

The purpose is simple:

find the weakness while it can still be fixed, not after it becomes a claim.

Data Privacy & Responsibility

Steven also advises on data privacy and personal data protection, particularly where privacy obligations sit inside broader SaaS, AI and technology contracts.

He looks beyond whether a privacy requirement exists to ask who actually controls the data, which systems are involved, what each party is responsible for and whether the contract pushes responsibility onto a business for something another party controls.

For technology providers, that distinction can determine who carries the cost when a data issue becomes a customer or regulatory problem.

Why His Advocacy Background Matters

Steven’s instinct for testing the other side’s argument was developed through international commercial arbitration advocacy.

At the 20th Vis East International Commercial Arbitration Moot in Hong Kong, his team reached the Semi-Finals, finishing in the top four out of 111 international teams and as the highest-ranking Indonesian team. He also received an Honourable Mention for the David Hunter Award for Best Claimant Memorandum.

The value to his transactional work today is straightforward:

he reads an agreement not only for what the parties intend it to mean, but for how the wording could be used against the client if the relationship is later tested.