Finally locked down my contract template after three revisions

I used to just copy paste the same simple agreement for every job, and last year a customer in Dallas pushed back hard on a scope clause. So I spent a weekend with a local legal aid service and added clear payment milestones and a cancellation fee. Has anyone else found that one weak spot in their paperwork that caused the biggest headache?

3 comments

3 Comments

johnson.eva14d ago

So wait, did you have a lawyer actually look at those payment milestones and cancellation fee you added, or was that just the legal aid service's general template? I'm asking cause that Dallas customer gave you the push to fix one thing, but there could be other blind spots in there you haven't found yet that a real specialist would catch.

finley_smith14d ago

Hold on a second, legal aid services are great but you have to be careful. They can give general advice but they aren't going to write a contract for you that covers every specific detail of your business. A friend of mine used one for a real estate deal and ended up with a clause that was way too vague and it caused more problems than it solved. You really need a contract lawyer who specializes in your field to look at the final version before you start using it.

owens.laura14d ago

I dunno, a vague clause is bad but that's more about who wrote it than where you got it from.