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Ask HN: What type of lawyer can review consultant agreements?

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Re: Ask HN: What type of lawyer can review consultant agreements?

#31

My favorite way to handle these types of situations is to contact any lawyer you trust and ask them to recommend someone. They will not only know the correct discipline for your particular scenario, but being in the industry, they’re a better judge of quality than just picking someone randomly out of a search engine. The first time I needed a lawyer to review business paperwork, I called a local personal injury lawye…

Startup lawyer here (but not your lawyer). This is good advice (ask a lawyer you trust for a referral in the right legal specialty).

More particularly for this question, while the state bar can be okay for referrals, you probably want someone who has worked in labor & employment law, or someone familiar with equity agreements if equity/stock is a meaningful component of the comp (look for a "startup lawyer" or "emerging companies lawyer"). Both of those will be familiar enough with the IP issues and general contract provisions. You'd probably only want an IP specialist if you're specifically licensing prior inventions (or you have IP-heavy side projects that you want to exclude).

Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: What type of lawyer can review consultant agreements?

#33

I've signed dozens of consultant agreements, and I've never run them by a lawyer. Just read it. I've never seen one that wasn't intelligible to a normal human. If there's anything you object to, raise the issue. Don't be afraid to push back. Nobody's trying to trick the other party; you're just trying to find a set of terms that everyone can agree on. I'm also in California, so noncompete rules aren't valid. That sai…

I know for a lot of companies it won't work, but I would actually try to change it to tie payment and development iterations together. The shorter they are, the better. And if possible get them to agree that the next iteration doesn't start until the payment for the previous one arrives. And that there are no checks, only digital payment.

Worth trying.

Re: Ask HN: What type of lawyer can review consultant agreements?

#34
Can I take a somewhat contrarian viewpoint here? Walk in to your local SBA office or even Chamber of Commerce office, and see if there is any kind of free or reduced cost legal assistance available. If this is your first contract, chances are that you don't have a ton of money to throw around on lawyers, but also that whatever contract needs to be put in place won't be anything more than boilerplate contract language. In reality - anyone who has ever come before you as a contractor or small business owner has likely seen hundreds of these. The main reason for you to make contact with a lawyer isn't about this contract, so much as it is down the road if you continue to grow your business, chances are you will need to have that relationship.

Re: Ask HN: What type of lawyer can review consultant agreements?

#36

I've signed dozens of consultant agreements, and I've never run them by a lawyer. Just read it. I've never seen one that wasn't intelligible to a normal human. If there's anything you object to, raise the issue. Don't be afraid to push back. Nobody's trying to trick the other party; you're just trying to find a set of terms that everyone can agree on. I'm also in California, so noncompete rules aren't valid. That sai…

One way around the billing issues is to act like an attorney, and go with a retainer.

Disclosure: I've worked with stickfigure and we've both been on a job where we got stiffed because we didn't use the retainer model. Lesson learned. ;-)

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