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That simple contract review I quoted 2 hours for ended up taking me 12 hours over 4 days
I took this job from a new client through a freelance legal platform last week. She needed me to review her standard contractor agreement, which sounded like a basic clause check. But then she kept sending additional versions (like 7 of them) with handwritten notes in the margins, and each one had different changes from the previous version. I spent the first 3 hours just organizing her mess of documents before I could even start the actual review. Then she wanted me to compare all the versions side by side to spot where the other party made sneaky edits (which I found in 3 places, by the way). For something I thought would be a quick morning task, it completely blew up my whole week's schedule. Has anyone else run into clients who hand you a simple project that turns into a nightmare of hidden complexity?
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sagejackson2mo ago
Total nightmare, @white.keith. Those sneaky edits make the extra hours feel justified at least.
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white.keith2mo ago
That part about "sneaky edits" really caught my eye. Were those changes buried in sections she already agreed to, or were they hidden in parts she didn't look at closely? I've seen clients who send seven versions of a document and don't even realize half of them are just formatting tweaks they asked for, not actual contract changes. But your situation sounds different, like the other side was trying to slip something through. What kind of edits were they, if you don't mind saying? Because that changes whether this was just a messy client or legitimately sketchy behavior from the other party. Most of the time, the extra hours come from disorganized clients, not actual fraud, so I'm curious which one you ran into here.
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