In today’s session of The Smart Agency Master Class I chat directly with you. That’s right – no guest! I wanted to talk with you about putting together the right legal documents before you run into a problem.

I’ll admit, this is something I should have done much sooner in my own agency. After all, the time to prepare is before there’s an issue. So you’ll get to learn from my mistake and pick up some valuable resources.

Now, I am not a lawyer, so this isn’t legal advice. These are tips for finding the right kind of legal documents for your business.

Who should you have agreements with?

Hopefully you already have some agreements in place. If you don’t start thinking about all of the people you are doing work with and for – clients, partners, contractors, employees, etc.

For these relationships you should have nondisclosure agreements, contractor agreements, and employment agreements. Sure, everything may seem all peaches and unicorns in the beginning, but it isn’t guaranteed to stay that way.

Don’t be so caught up in trying to close the deal that you forget the agreement!

Prepare before the legal battle.

Before you get into some sort of legal situation, you need to get your ducks in a row. It wasn’t until after I had to deal with some legal battles that I began preparing myself. Save yourself the trouble and get your agreements together.

Go to my website, and download the proposal template. Included in the template is the agreement.

What needs to be in an agreement?

* A description of services you’ll provide and what you will be responsible for delivering.

* Pricing and payment. Be sure to also include what the client is responsible for with payment (check, credit card, mailing address, etc).

* A termination clause. If the client cancels early, is there a penalty? (There should be.)

* Disclaimers about how your software isn’t magic and that you both agree not to share each others’ stuff.

* Spell out ownership. The client owns any custom work that they’ve paid for and you own your tools (i.e. frameworks).

* Limitations of liability to clarify what you are not responsible for covering. For example, you shouldn’t be responsible for anything over the proposal amount. (i.e. $10k proposal = $10k cap in responsibility.)

* Governing law. What county and what state is the agreement bound? This is important to keep you from having to trek back and forth across the country every time you have to go to court.

Now I know this isn’t the sexiest of topics. It’s not going to win you more clients or grow your business, but it’s going to help protect you. You’ve worked hard to get to where you are, so don’t let unpreparedness cause you harm.

More agreement resources.

Check out LegalZoom for free and paid agreements. If you use a payroll company, you can also check with them about agreements they offer. A lot of them have good ones, especially for employment. Lastly,  get the proposal agreement that I used at my agency.