Do you have protection? (legal that is)

Legally protecting yourself (as a freelancer or agency), is one of those things that sound good, but few people actually do anything about.

We place in the ‘it must be expensive’ or the ‘I’ve been fine without it so far’ basket, and it stays there and looks at you with geico-cash eyes – begging for your attention. It’s just one of those things we know we need, but it hasn’t made it high enough up the priority list to do something about it.

UNTIL… that day when a client from that ‘big job’ turns around and wants to take you to court for some kind of misunderstanding or wants ANOTHER set of revisions after you’ve already done 25. Once you’re in a hole with no back door there’s really no place to go and no way out – UNLESS you’ve covered yourself with some form of legal contract.

Disclaimer

Please note that I am not a lawyer, and I have no formal legal education o the comments and observations in this post are merely ideas and collections of knowledge from various people in my experience.

Contracts in a nutshell

Basically a contract is any agreement between 2 or more parties. The majority of the time contracts are printed documents with a few signatures on the bottom, but legally. Interestingly, even a verbal agreement is legally binding – however infinitely harder to prove if anything makes it to a courtroom.

Why use a contract?

A contract (although somewhat daunting) is a very professional way to start a professional relationship of work/service. A contract should clearly contain the expectations of the initiating party, and their expectations of the client. It will often include clauses covering instances where either party may want to terminate the contract and the consequences of that.

Most of the time, contracts we sign are locking us into a payment expectation and the period of time those payments will be required. Statement of work (SOW) contracts are similar, but detail the terms for a specific project.

What you CAN do in a contract?

You can actually include almost anything within the law. This may include (but not limited to);

• Payment outlines and dates
• Project expectations and deliverable dates
• Failure to meet payment or milestone results
• Expected behavior or appearances
• Expected confidentiality, disclosure or exposure
• Limitations of liability
• Outline of potential additional charges

What you CAN’T do in a contract?

No matter how committed you are to an agreement, any contract which includes breaking any law may be deemed null and void in whole or part regardless of the context or intent.

You also can’t deliberately confuse or mislead people. Any contract that is deemed to possibly have an alternate meaning may void something you have included. With the motto of Google – Don’t be evil.

Don’t include unrealistic expectations. You should always be writing an agreement that all parties should be able to comply with. There’s no benefit including a requirement that will cause unnecessary stress or worry. Like adding a line that would disconnect a service if a payment is 1 minute late.

Play nice

I have seen a few examples of work agreement contracts which heavily favor the agency. You don’t want a potential client to leave you because they’re uneasy about agreeing to your terms. On the flip side, you get clients who don’t read all of the fine print (how many people read all 40 pages of a mobile phone contract before they sign?), who may not comply with any unexpected inclusions – but will put up a fight if you try to enforce them.

My contract suggestions

1. Keep it short. For a freelance project, I would say no more than 1 page. People don’t want to sit and read 5 pages of garbage, they want to see what you’re locking them in to. You can do things like separating off documents like privacy policy to your website for people to read later.

2. Keep it easy to read. If you keep it simple, there’s no arguments later.

3. Number each point. That way you can reference clauses quickly when talking on the phone or over email.

4. Make sure you give a client adequate time to look over the document before signing. Maybe even allow them to get a third party to review it.

5. Play Nice (see above).

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What inclusions do you have in your freelance contracts?