Was dead wrong about using plain text contracts for small clients | Freelance Legal Help - Freelance Forum - The Community for Independent Professionals
Was dead wrong about using plain text contracts for small clients
Figured PDFs were unprofessional but after an online legal forum showed me 3 horror stories of people getting sued over unclear email agreements I switched to a $50 template from a legal site and it saved me from a $2,000 dispute last month, anyone else find a cheap tool that actually works?
Oh man, that template probably paid for itself a hundred times over. I had a client once try to claim our verbal agreement included free revisions forever because I said "we can tweak it later" in an email. Spent weeks going back and forth until I finally just ate the cost to shut them up. The cheapest thing that actually saved my butt was a simple fill-in-the-blank contract from a local small business center. Like 20 bucks and it had all the basic stuff like scope creep clauses and payment terms.
Funny timing on this, I was just reading a study the other day that said something like 70% of freelancers who start with a handshake deal end up wishing they had something in writing. Seems like trust works great until it doesn't, you know?