Can developers read/interpret law clauses?

Problematic bits might be "in the course of your duties for us" (need a lawyer to know what that means) and "by using knowledge made available through your employment" is very vague...

My experience is with small companies you can negotiate changes that make everyone happy, if you have a lawyer to reduce hassle for company. Big companies... harder to say.

For me issue is "or by using materials, tools or knowledge made available through your employment" when you combine it with "whether during or after the termination of your employment" and "shall remain in full force and effect following any termination"

So basically, let say I do not know Scala and I learn it there or I use GoDaddy to register domain, according to contract I will never be able to use those anywhere else, and if I do I will need to handover things I have done?!

As a lawyer and a dev this is pretty interesting. There's less distance between law and coding than a lot of people think. Both are expressing logic.

I agree with the comments below that you should read any contract that applies to you. Chances are that you'll understand it and this is extremely important before signing.

With that said, lawyers spend years learning how to draft and interpret contracts and I thin it's simplistic to say that it's similar to a BDD spec. There's a lot more going on under the hood.

Either way, never accept blindly and you're within your rights to seek a plain-English clarification.

The "materials, tools" part is fairly standard in the U.S. (I believe the OP is in the UK, though, correct?). The "knowledge" part is overbroad.

If knowledge were replaced with "Company's confidential information," then that would make sense and is standard. Your employer has a legitimate interest in your not using their trade secrets and confidential information for your own use.

But everyone gains "knowledge" working at a job. Whether it's learning a programming language, being introduced to a publicly available tool or service, we all learn things of general applicability at our jobs. Come on - why do employers ask for people with X years experience, other than the fact that they understand people learn things from their working experience?

So, yes, this is unreasonable and I wouldn't sign it, unless amended.

My wife is a lawyer. She sometimes has to deal with people who think they know the law as well as she does (or better), simply because they've read the written laws or they've read the contract. That is almost always a huge mistake.

What is written is only one leg of the tripod. Another leg of the tripod is knowing the legal precedents, and you won't get those just by reading the laws or the contracts -- and even if you pass the bar exam, you probably won't learn those outside of going to law school. The third leg of the tripod is knowing which judge(s) you are dealing with, and how they are likely to rule, based on what is before them -- and even law school can't really help prepare you for this problem.

And all of that assumes everyone is operating in the same legal regime, in the same jurisdiction. The legal systems can be radically different in other places, such that the lawyers in that area don't even think the same way. For example, in French law, there is no Federal system. So, any contract that is written with language referring to federal law may be null and void in France -- just ask Chubb and their multimillion dollar case that went all the way up to the French Supreme Court.

So, as a programmer, sure -- you can read the contract, and you may even be able to do a better job of it than most. But do you know all the legal precedents in your jurisdiction? Do you know all the respective judges who might see your case and how they would rule?

If it's a standard contract with a big company, you may just have to bite the bullet -- or decide you don't want to work under those rules.

Either way, a big company probably isn't going to make any changes for you, because this is their standard contract that they give everyone, and they never make any changes for anyone.

So, how badly do you want this job? How much of a stink are you willing to raise to try to get changes made to the contract, before you decide it's not worth it?

Even if you are a lawyer, if you are a client in a case, you don't want to represent yourself. You can't really be properly impartial when it comes to what you want, and so you would be the moron who would be retaining a fool as his representation.