What Happens When a Freelancer Does Work for a Client Without a Contract

http://blog.kunvay.com/what-happens-when-a-freelancer-does-graphic-design-work-for-a-client-without-a-contract-marks-copyright-case-study/

by kunvay • 13 years ago

59 73 13 years ago

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reggiecasual• 13 years ago

Great article. Must read for anyone using freelancers to outsource work.

gk1• 13 years ago

Seems very helpful for someone who ends up in a messy situation without a contract. But please, don't even allow this to happen. Use a contract!

barsky• 13 years ago

If you're a freelancer of any type, you should always work under a contract. This talk (about 40 minutes) sums up why: http://vimeo.com/22053820.

kunvay2• 13 years ago

I LOVE that video! He's right on point. Here's our take on the subject: http://kunvay.wistia.com/medias/4272c23ee2

graeme• 13 years ago

I outsource work on eLance, and this made me investigate. For anyone else wondering, eLance's terms state that any IP for a project belongs to the employer after payment is made:

https://www.elance.com/q/sites/default/files/page_pdf/legal/...

https://www.elance.com/q/blog/elance-protection-dead-bolting...

ChristianBundy• 13 years ago

Just so you know, it's Elance – no weird Apple iSpelling. :)

JohnTHaller• 13 years ago

You mean aPple, right? :)

kunvay2• 13 years ago

This is definitely something that is important to be aware of and to have clarity on. Future investors and company buyers want proof you own the IP in your business if you're trying to sell it.

You should also check similar agreements on 99Designs, Freelancer.com, oDesk too to be sure you actually own what you buy.

phamilton5• 13 years ago

Recently, I've been using contracts that do not transfer copyright. We grant them unlimited license to our copyrighted content. We also signed an NDA, preventing us from relicensing the codebase to a competitor. We haven't done anything to take advantage of keeping the copyright yet, but I like keeping the rights for ourselves. I imagine of anything it would make it easy for is to open source code that doesn't tie in directly to the product.

delinka• 13 years ago

An NDA or a non-compete? These are different beasts.

phamilton5• 13 years ago

It's an NDA, and I guess technically we could contract a competitor and reuse some of the code, but the NDA requires us not to release "secret sauce" essentially, meaning that a good chunk of the application could not be reused.

While it sounds confusing, my understanding is that it basically means that we have the right to reuse whatever module or library we create however and wherever we want.

benjamincburns2• 13 years ago

I'd love to hear more details about this. Is this something you came up with yourself, or did you write it with an IP attorney? Would you be willing to share your template agreement somewhere? Has this been a tough sell to any of your clients? Does your agreement include language which either defines what's proprietary or specifies how to define what's proprietary and therefore subject to the NDA?

phamilton5• 13 years ago

Here's an excerpt (condensed):

“Work Product” shall mean all design and applications... excluding the “Elements”. Developer assigns to Client all right, title and interest in and to the Work Product. “Elements” shall mean Developer’s algorithms, libraries, scripts, user interface and experience designs, architecture, objects, graphic files, [etc.]. The Elements shall remain the sole and exclusive property of Developer; provided that, subject to/upon full and final payment for the Services, Developer grants to Client a royalty-free, nonexclusive, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, subliceseable license in and to the Elements to use in connection with the Application.

So we do give up copyright for the application as a whole "Work Product", but retain the copyright for individual components "Elements".

The client is not in a technical space, and quite frankly doesn't know much about software development. We may be pulling a fast one here that other clients would refuse. In any case, it hasn't caused any problems in our working relationship and everyone's happy.

phamilton5• 13 years ago

To answer your other question, I bummed a template contract off a friend. He got it from an attorney.

matho• 13 years ago

You might fairly consider this an insignificant anecdote, but: I have rejected people for contract work because they insisted on retaining copyright, sometimes on this basis alone.

phamilton5• 13 years ago

This is a new thing for me. It's a client that is not in a technical space and doesn't have much experience in software development.

If they had rejected that clause, I probably wouldn't have put up much of a fight. I figure that if they don't want it, we should keep it.

vasundhar• 13 years ago

For a Business:

* Its a Financial Risk in terms of Commitment to deliver for what is paid for.

You Don't know if the person is really spending the hours he spent.

There is nothing that can save your system, your business, because the business is your life, "Not Necessarily" his.

* Time and Commitment are absent in unwritten understandings.

For a Contractor/Freelancer:

* Its a Financial Risk with respect to the commitment to be paid for deliverable.

* You get only the advance, no matter how complicated the solution you have provided.

* Requirements may change any time, you don't know what you are working and there is no line between success and a failure.

chasing2• 13 years ago

I'm just going to echo what everyone else is saying: Contract. Contract. Contract.

A contract isn't some scary legal document full of cryptic legalese. It's a clear description of what services will be provided and what the compensation will be. And on what schedule everything will happen. With details about what happens if things go south.

Most client problems are not as cut-and-dry as "he took all of my work and is laughing at me and lighting cigars with $100 bills while he refuses to pay me for absolutely no reason." Most disputes are based on misunderstandings of some sort. They think feature X was in-scope. You disagree and want to bill them additionally for it. They are withholding pay because they don't consider the project completed. You do. And such. Having to threaten a client will waste a ton of your time and sour relationships -- clients you have disputes with can still be good clients. This is why you write down everyone's expectations at the start.

Most clients aren't evil. They want good relationships with the people who work for them. But disagreements arise. Contracts give everyone a neutral document to refer to and say "look, this is what we agreed upon when we started."

Use contracts.

larrys8• 13 years ago

"Use contracts."

First, to state the obvious which anyone who has been around for some time will tell you a contract is only good if the dollar amount is enough to get a lawyer involved as far as filing and pursuing any legal action. Otherwise good luck with trying to convert a contract into actual dollars because you are right.

Anyway, for the purpose of what you are saying it doesn't have to be a "formal" contract but merely an email trail will suffice to make your point and get the other party (if honorable) to pay. In the past I've even used notes of verbal conversations which I've repeated back the sequence of events to the satisfaction of the other side. (Once again totally depends on who the other side is and their motives.)

Now if they are not honorable, don't have the money, or just want to play games, then if you have enough at stake to hire an attorney a formal contract is a benefit (but not essential since the "trier of fact" as well as the other side will weigh their chance of settling vs. fighting). Consequently, yes, documentation is key but it's more a balance of power rather than the formality of the document).

Unfortunately the article completely ignores the practical aspects of going after someone who owes you money despite what any contract says. As if the law is enough to make the right thing happen. It's not.

bmelton• 13 years ago

You're not wrong, but I'd feel remiss if I didn't make a point.

but merely an email trail will suffice to make your point and get the other party (if honorable) to pay.

This is true if and when you are expressive in your emails. As soon as a new feature is added to the scope, it is imperative that you speak out and say "Well, this is out of scope, but we can likely accommodate by adjusting the scope <however>".

Far too often I see freelancers just take on the work without mentioning it's a scope change, only to have to fight for the bill to be paid later.

In fact, most of the people I see complaining about customers not paying are due to a failure of setting appropriate expectations. If timelines are changing as a result of your efforts, notify the customer. If they're changing as a result of the customer's actions, notify the customer. If the scope is changing for any reason, notify the customer.

Do not expect to be able to submit a bill at the end of the day and have it be paid -- in companies of a sufficient size, the person paying the bills is not the same person you're dealing with on scope, and the person paying the bills is likely being paid, in part, to ensure that they aren't being over billed. Where that's the case, they'll examine the contract line by line and compare it to the invoice, and pity to whomever meets someone good at that job.

They're not trying to screw you over, they're just trying to make sure taht they're not getting ripped off, and changing how you bill the customer without notifying the customer of a change, looks very much like ripping them off (even if it isn't.)

Use contracts. Use email. Speak plainly.

tptacek5• 13 years ago

Contracts are such a basic fact of business life, universally understood by good-faith vendors and customers, that recalcitrance about signing one should be taken as a "run don't walk" signal. By working without a contract, you doubly imperil yourself: you lose significant legal protections, and also select a client base that is particularly likely to cause you problems down the road.

Matasano has many clients we've maintained since the formation of the company in 2005, and many more where our counterparts in those companies are friends. The idea of doing business with any of them sans contract is unthinkable. It just doesn't happen.

Working without a contract is unprofessional. Don't do it.

ritchiea2• 13 years ago

a contract is only good if the dollar amount is enough to get a lawyer involved as far as filing and pursuing any legal action

I disagree, contracts are much better than an email trail for keeping both parties on the same page. Email trails are murky and take effort to navigate. Emails sometimes lack a complete context. A contract is a canonical text for your work arrangement. Starting your work with a contract is not just good practice to CYA so you get paid, it's a good way to start conversations with your client to make sure you both get what you're looking for and don't want to kill each other (or if you do want to kill the other person you at least have to blame yourself first for agreeing to such foolish terms).

chasing2• 13 years ago

"First, to state the obvious which anyone who has been around for some time will tell you a contract is only good if the dollar amount is enough to get a lawyer involved as far as filing and pursuing any legal action. Otherwise good luck with trying to convert a contract into actual dollars because you are right."

I've been around for some time and I absolutely would not say this. A contract is not primarily about being adversarial. It's about being clear. There's a huge difference. A contract is the end-point of the conversation you have that clarifies as much as you can before anyone starts work or writes a check.

If someone is planning on making your life hell, a contract won't stop them. It's a piece of paper, after all, and, yes, if lawyers have to get involved then pretty much everyone has lost. Preventing that scenario is less about getting a contract and more about learning to assess people and decide who is legitimate and who is full of shit so you can walk away before any contract ever gets written.

(Negotiating a contract, by the way, is a pretty good measure of what it's going to be like to work with someone. Consider it your first project together. If it goes poorly, that might be a bad sign about how the whole project will go...)

Silhouette5• 13 years ago

I couldn't disagree more. Usually in this field, unless we're talking about a huge deal, you've both already lost if you get as far as litigation. That implies direct costs, and it implies a breakdown of your business relationship that probably doesn't help anyone accomplish anything or leave anyone's reputation changed for the better.

Contracts serve a valuable purpose long before court filings are involved: the contractual paperwork is where you can both set out, definitively and up-front, your understanding of what the deal is. If there are significant areas of disagreement, it is much better to discuss them and hopefully resolve them amicably before the project starts and either of you has serious skin in the game. If that's not possible, you can both walk with little loss and no hard feelings. It's unlikely to hurt either party's reputation if they want to figure out a different deal with someone else instead, and it leaves the door open to working together on some other project in the future.

It is in everyone's interests to get a clear, genuinely understood agreement written down in a specific, identified version at the start of a project.

spiritplumber• 13 years ago

I generally just tell people that if they do the right thing and pay up, I will do the right thing and let them live. Also see: OpenROV.

InTheSwiss• 13 years ago

In short you can, and will, get fucked by your client. Never do work without a contract. I would have thought it were common sense but I have seen far too many people owed thousands from clients they did work for who then gave them the finger. Most people/small companies don't have the money or don't want to spend the money on getting the money as it will end up costing them more so they just put it down to "that is the price you pay". Well that is a fucking stupid attitude and you are a fool for doing the work without a contract. Watch http://vimeo.com/22053820.

auctiontheory2• 13 years ago

As enjoyable as freelancing can be, the headache of contracts on one end, and trying to get paid on the other, really put a damper on the "lifestyle." This looks like a great asset.

ritchiea2• 13 years ago

Question for other freelancers: how do you handle changes in a spec?

I've been nervous about this lately because I'm doing freelance work and the contract outlined a spec that we've now deviated from greatly. I'm not incredibly worried because we do bi-weekly billing but do you regularly ask clients to revise contracts if the spec changes?

And when you begin a contract, what level of specificity in a spec is a good idea? Obviously some level of specificity is a must, but an overly detailed contract leaves you in the position I described above where the contract does not actually describe the work in progress.

sard420• 13 years ago

We basically wrote up what we called a change order. Detailed how we changed, or what we deviated on. Signed by both parties as just a cya sort of deal.

tptacek5• 13 years ago

There are two different functional components of a contract; the "terms" and the "statement of work" (SOW). They're often combined in a single "standard contractor agreement" with a fill-in-the-blanks "SOW exhibit", but just as often you have a distinct master agreement with terms and a SOW for each project.

The SOW is responsible for laying out what work you're going to do. If a changing spec is a project risk, a typical consultant response to that would be to build some of the spec language into the SOW, so that if the spec changes in a way that materially harms your ability to complete the project, you have recourse with the client.

The typical best case scenario for spec slips on projects is a client that extends the contract to account for them, and a somewhat rigorous SOW is a good tool for making that happen.

notwedtm• 13 years ago

While #1 is getting a contract, in "Mark's" case, he has a claim for Unjust Enrichment.

If you have a client that uses work you did, even if you have no contract, you can still sue for damages under Unjust Enrichment laws in the US.

auctiontheory2• 13 years ago

There's theory (taught at Yale Law), and then there's practice. While you may be theoretically correct, on a practical level, the lack of a contract makes getting paid much more difficult. Unfortunately, I can't bill the client for the time or stress of the legal case, and winning is never a certainty. Consider that the client is much larger, and may have lawyers on staff full-time.

ams6110• 13 years ago

I'm guessing most freelance work is for pretty small amounts. Unless you are talking about a claim in excess of $10,000, it's not going to be worth pursuing, you will owe your lawyer more than that very quickly. If it's a local client you might have some luck in small claims court where you typically represent yourself.

misterjangles• 13 years ago

I can see a client canceling a deal without paying after you have done work due to not having a contract. To actually use the work you produced and weasel out of paying with a "ha ha I tricked you into working for free" is really malicious. I would say that client would probably never have paid anyway. However you may force them to reveal their hand by signing a contract. They will probably try to find some other loophole, but at least you have some documentation that helps you to take legal action.

I have had client drag their feet on the contract and the down payment, but rush me to start. My feeling is that if you can't get a check when they are desperate for you to start, then it certainly will be difficult getting one after the work is complete.

The more eager you are for the gig, you may be more willing to agree to things. But definitely it's a always a good idea to be patient and make sure both sides agree to the terms before you invest your labor.

EGreg• 13 years ago

It works like this:

Companies have limited liability in the USA. They are subject to full market discipline. The owners of the companies are not.

And thus ... business between companies should take precautions such as getting paid a retainer, at milestones, etc. and assume that some payments will not be coming.

Meanwhile people (e.g. employees) can rely on the government to put heavy pressure on employers to pay them. I am in favor of more direct guarantees of basic living standards -- i.e. a basic income -- such as some European countries are doing. That way even the employer-employee relationship can be less regulated.

fat0wl12• 13 years ago

Just throwing this out there since I know the common wisdom is to "have a contract, duh".

I have a few clients who basically put me on a retainer, then I send them a bill. If you give an hourly rate + an estimate clients seem to be cool, provided they are actual businessses. The only clients I've ever had issues with are individuals (usually artists since I freelance electronic media) and that stems from budget / rampant psychotic narcissism. But with businesses, I state my rate I estimate hours & then I bill them.

I'm sure there is a more secure way of handling this with contracts but if a company I work remotely for ever stiffs me on a bill: 1. They better be closing up shop the next day or I'm gonna come after them hard. 2. They lose access to the skills I offer them. 3. I probably have accounts/services in their name that they can't alter/operate without my help, so they're really just shooting themselves in the foot & will likely come to realize this rather quickly.

Anyway worst case scenario I lose 1 payment (maybe it was 1-3 grand?). Maybe it's scary to think that a 3k payment might disappear but the reality is, after discussing with them they'll probably just hand it over anyway or you can settle in between. Even if I one day lose a thousand dollars (which I highly doubt) I can look back and smile knowing I never had to deal with a ton of legalese.

The reality of it is that businesses can't just stiff you on a bill if they agreed to pay for your services, and if you have nice clients who are trying to build a business they have no reason to hurt you if you do good work for them. But I understand not everyone has the luxury of sane clients. I certainly didn't back when I was dealing 1-on-1 with artists.

LukeShu2• 13 years ago

    > The reality of it is that businesses can't just stiff
    > you on a bill if they agreed to pay for your services

That feels like it should be true, but it's not. I'm not just speaking about software; a large portion of my family is in construction, and I'm shocked at how often client businesses think they can get away with just not paying them.

Perhaps it actually is better in the software world, where clients (hopefully) know they are going to need you in the future.

Anyway, good for you that you can find clients that know they need to pay you; but not all businesses have figured that out.

eli• 13 years ago

Years ago I worked for a mom & pop computer consulting shop and I was surprised by how many small businesses just didn't pay their bills.

Anecdotally, we did a lot of work with local law firms and they were the worst. (I guess because what're you gonna do? Sue them?)

fat0wl12• 13 years ago

Hmm I'm sorry to hear that. :-/

But if they brought a civil suit they would win easily, no? That's what I really meant by that line. My father is a lawyer & every time I bring up something like that to him he laughs. "Of course they have to pay, it's just too much trouble sometimes. Usually just the threat of legal action is good enough."

Maybe it's not so simple but that's a shame.

enobrev• 13 years ago

I agree with this, completely.

During the first 5 or 6 years of my 10 years of freelance, I almost never had a contract in place, and I _never_ got fucked over for it.

That's not to say it's OK to avoid contracts. Only a single set of data points that says it's possible to do business without them and still do very well.

Of course larger clients will generally require them to cover their own asses. And any project that's over x, where x seems like a good deal of money, should _always_ be covered by a contract - both for your safety and the safety of your client.

But the cynical idea that everyone is out to get you is silly. Yes, get a lawyer to get a solid standard contract together for you. But then pay attention to the clients you're dealing with. A contract gives you a legal standing in court, but you still have to go to court. There's a lot more to be said for choosing clients that aren't going to cause trouble in the first place.

fat0wl12• 13 years ago

all good advice. I've actually had issues working with larger clients because they try to give all-inclusive project prices. For one I fulfilled it and weaseled into off-contract hourly rate and that actually worked out much much better for me.

If you give a tech consultant a job they will code from A to B. The client is always the one throwing up roadblocks and change requets. If they don't understand that they are on the hook for those billing hours, yeah you don't have a good client there...

ONLY USE HOURLY RATE + ESTIMATE that's the best advice I can give on top of enobrev's. Maybe others disagree, but in my experience project rates mean the client will try to take advantage or if you get a project price that seems absurdly high & you get that flash of $$ signs in your eyes, the client will usually realize they overpaid and you'll lose potential future business with them. Just use a rate and be somewhat ethical about it. Even if you don't have a huge client base, they will all come back around for more work every few months.

napoleond• 13 years ago

I probably have accounts/services in their name that they can't alter/operate without my help, so they're really just shooting themselves in the foot & will likely come to realize this rather quickly.

Just as a counterpoint to this, it's possible for a client to not pay you for services rendered and sue you for not maintaining previous accounts/services for them, and the courts might very well take their side, depending on the specifics. Whether there is a written contract or not, there is a contract when you agree to exchange services for money; the only difference is that if it's not written and a conflict arises, you're depending on the court system to guess what the agreement was based on the word of two opposing parties.

I understand what you're saying though; realistically a lot of work gets done all over the world every day without written contracts, and everyone is okay. My general rule of thumb is to never extend more than a few thousand dollars of credit to any client without a written contract, and less if the job could involve any sort of extra liabilities. For a retainer-style agreement like the one you describe, I like to have a contract in place from the get-go, but with the "terms of notice" set so that things like email count--that way, if we ever negotiate for a specific project I can do it over email and count that as a written record of our agreement should the need ever arise.

fat0wl12• 13 years ago

Yeah it's not like I'd use a threat like "I'll disconnect all your accounts!" but if they have some EC2 instance they don't understand how to operate it does give you some leverage since they will be needing some admin done at some point in the near future. I really doubt they can sue you for refusing to perform maintenance on their systems since we as programmers do not become indentured servants simply from having done business with them in the past. Tons of high-end engineers leave big projects all the time with the attitude of "well, you should've realized I might not be around forever" and it hurts projects but that's capitalism, it's one of the few rights that give employees an edge in the market.

If we never had an agreement for me to document all my work (extremely common) then the best they can do is say "hand over the keys" but they can't make you drive. If they're willing to invest in a new engineer's learning curve, the problems must be way deeper than 1 bill & you should've seen it coming, enough to write out a formal contract for that last bit. In hostile workplaces contracts should be the norm, sure, but I just try to avoid those situations to begin with.

Good advice on the email bit, but I kindof just assume that those count as written records. Either courts acknowledge them or they don't I'm not sure that explicitly saying they do really changes much.

Also, you say "there is a contract when you agree to exchange services for money" but if they don't pay you... didn't they already break that contract? Why would you have to do due diligence (maintenance) for someone who refuses to acknowledge your initial agreement?

tptacek5• 13 years ago

There are worse things that can happen to you when you work without a contract than simply not getting paid. Contracts also set up liability and contract termination terms, and without that stuff in writing, you can end up in a he-said she-said situation over these issues.

You should always work under a contract. I have a hard time seeing why anyone wouldn't.

fat0wl12• 13 years ago

Eh, I appreciate the effort that is being put into this argument but the reality of it is that it's not for me. If I have to drive an hour to see my client or send a lot of things back & forth in the mail it's really just time wasted.

A good professional relationship & a couple of emails is all I need for freelance. If you're talking about a long-term high dollar amount thing then sure, I understand.

& the reason I don't use one is simple -- I have an hourly rate. Whatever contract we come up with would look like this: "__ is my hourly rate. You will pay __ times the number of hours I worked." This has long been established since the first 1 or 2 interactions with any client and I think is obvious for any hourly service worker. Within the tech industry this is even standard for a lot of corporate consultants (I happen to be one).

For freelance, I provide work estimates but things change. All the comments I see on this thread are like "write a change order for each change, make sure you keep a record of scope". No thanks, not for me. I just give estimates, tell the client when we're going over-budget. If they seem concerned we can talk about it if they say "Keep going no worries" then I keep going, no worries.

I'm not at all saying that contracts aren't useful, it's just that the tech industry is really fast-paced and often involves remote work. If you're really concerned about stuff getting ugly, ask for a contract, sure. But I would do contract with 50% deposit because who actually wants to deal with going to court. At least you'd have 50% to sit on & think.

To each his own but I'm a programmer not a businessman. I net way more money streamlining my coding process than I do thinking about stuff like this.

benjamincburns2• 13 years ago

I may be misunderstanding something here. To paraphrase, the argument this article opens with is "we didn't agree that you were working for me, so I don't have to pay you" along with "because we didn't have an agreement which protects your ownership of your work, I can do whatever I want with it." I thought the law (shop law?) defaults to an independent contractor owning his or her own work in most (every?) states? Even if the law defaults to a work-for-hire agreement (where the client owns the work outright) for independent contractors, how could the client reasonably argue that he/she somehow doesn't need to compensate the contractor (essentially saying "Me? You weren't working for me!"), while simultaneously arguing that somehow the client has any/all rights to the work?

I'd hope that anyone in this kind of situation would think through this kind of logic, short circuit to "okay, I'm dealing with a ripe asshole here" and take the same action which they would toward anyone else outright stealing from them.

Edit:

Regarding contract/no contract, experienced/knowledgeable clients will require a contract when dealing with an independent contractor, even if for no other purpose than to protect their ability to make use of the output of said contractor's work.

larrys8• 13 years ago

"Federal courts now routinely accept an individual’s electronic “click” or “tap” within an electronic transfer of copyright document as a valid “electronic signature” fulfilling the signature requirements of the Copyright Act of 1976."

See things like this are dangerous. To the uninformed the above looks so simple. "Federal courts now accept" (and the rest of this article) totally ignore the cost and practicality of bringing any legal action. And guess what? The other side, when they are trying to screw you, is aware of that and will use it against you.

Back in the late 90's we had the opposite thing happen. Paid $6500 +- for a freelancer (related to a well know internet celebrity at the time) to write some software (total cost maybe 20k iirc.) Time dragged on and on and they were not able to deliver.

You know what? We just walked away from the money. What to do? Sue someone in another state over $6500?

w0rd-driven• 13 years ago

I'm no lawyer but wouldn't email communication at the very least be used as evidence, if not an "informal contract". The scope of the work had to be defined somewhere. Obviously this falls apart if this was all done via verbal communication but its always a good idea to have this in some form you can store for safe keeping. Even recorded phone conversations count.

A purposeful contract makes sense in every situation but if you have clear documentation without one, you should be pretty well off when a problem arises.

The notion of hourly work is something I try to divorce from my thoughts. Yes I do base what I do on some hourly metric but the complexity has to matter to some degree. Generally more complex = way more hours but that's not always the case. Most of my problems in this area come from uncovering a hornets nest when something just seems simple enough on the surface.

I like to think of it this way. Office is still $x per seat. I may have figured out 98% of a domain but I should charge the last customer the work it took to get to that point from customer #1. I may have to do much less work if I've done my job right but there's no telling exactly what of that they'll want to unravel in the process. Unlike Office I don't have a bankroll for r&d I can charge a premium for to recoup my losses over clients. Clients need to assume that just because they want what someone else has its never what they paid - the hours it takes to just tweak it for them.

primitivesuave• 13 years ago

If you don't use a contract you're asking for trouble. Be like James Bond in The World Is Not Enough- don't hesitate in jumping into bed with Elektra King (the client), but don't overlook the possibility that she's been brainwashed by an evil sociopathic genius.

tzs2• 13 years ago

You have a contract. You just don't know the terms.

You might be able to guess them with sufficient knowledge of the law of your jurisdiction. In the US (other than Louisiana [1]), you'd need to know at least State and possibly Federal contract law, common law, and a bunch of court cases.

[1] Louisiana based its law on French and Spanish law, which derive from Roman law. The other 49 states base their law on English common law.

dpeck• 13 years ago

Is there any value in a sample or boilerplate contracts?

I've asked some people in the past and they seem very guarded about sharing theirs and always try to refer me to a lawyer. Good advice and I realize that lawyers should save you money in the long run, but for on-the-side small time consulting is there a base template that would get people through their first few gigs?

What Happens When a Freelancer Does Work for a Client Without a Contract

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