Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Crowdsourced freelance contract template, written in plain language

web.archive.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 71 posts

Re: Show HN: Crowdsourced freelance contract template, written in plain language

#61

Post by lawnchair_larry »

kemitchell wrote: post #25
tptacek wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the conflict section in there at all, though? To the extent it's there now, it's conceding something clients hope to get through redlines; game-theoretically, it's pure negative for the contractor.

It's obviously for the client's benefit. But additional turns of the agreement aren't good for anyone. Clients typically have the leverage to get this. I've included a fairly contractor-leaning formulation, which requires the client to act.

Unlike employees, clients generally want their contractors to have experience working with competitors.

They also don’t want the contractor to disclose anything about their business or the project to anyone else, which is why they’ll never expect you to provide a competing clients list. If they ever start to inquire, that line of questioning is trivially shut down by pointing this out. You take confidentiality seriously, and that applies to them as well.

That aside, it’s a ridiculous proposition. They are hiring you as an expert in this domain because of your experience. If you’d signed such an agreement with the first company to suggest that, you would not be able to offer your services to the client.

Re: Show HN: Crowdsourced freelance contract template, written in plain language

#62

Post by koolba »

avinium wrote: post #47
ruairidhwm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wanting to build a legal IDE for ages, it makes no sense that lawyers are stuck using Microsoft Word with lots of bolt-on plugins rather than a VSCode / Sublime equivalent.

Said tools exist, though they're not particularly successful. Word is just too easy to use - even if the replacement is 5% better (which is unlikely), that's not enough to prompt a shift.

The issue is that the replacement isn’t 5% better (it is!), it’s the network effect. The counter pretty likely will ask for a redlined Word doc so you’re back to exporting it from your fancy scm-diffed Markdown file.

Re: Show HN: Crowdsourced freelance contract template, written in plain language

#63

Post by redler »

zanny wrote: post #52
smacktoward wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can it be so difficult to build a software application? How can there possibly be so many variations on that theme that you need a programmer to do that?

The difference is if you want to build it yourself there is an infinite amount of documentation on how to do it freely available. I'm pretty sure if you started on google with "how do I make my own website" you would end up with something passable in a months time. If you google "how do I write my own contract" you go down a rabbit hole of impossible to reconcile contradictions and absurdity.

As “code”, one problem is that the contract is only “compiled” and “run” if and when things go very badly indeed — on a compiler that is extremely expensive, loosely specified, and non-deterministic.

Re: Show HN: Crowdsourced freelance contract template, written in plain language

#64

Post by ruairidhwm »

Tehchops wrote: post #40
ruairidhwm wrote: post #26

I've seen quite a few of these and whilst I love the idea, they usually have a ton of problems in them. As tptacek pointed out - there is no chance that this document would survive first contact with a sophisticated party and any qualified lawyer would likely rip this to shreds. Firstly there is no regard to the potential jurisdiction that the user chooses. If I were to put in England then that would mean there are d…

>Source: I'm a software engineer and a qualified lawyer I imagine there is no shortage of demand for your cross-section of skills? Do you utilize them both, or did you pivot from one to the other?

I did a legal tech startup a while back, and now I'm looking for another opportunity :)

Re: Show HN: Crowdsourced freelance contract template, written in plain language

#65

Post by ruairidhwm »

pnw_hazor wrote: post #35
ruairidhwm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wanting to build a legal IDE for ages, it makes no sense that lawyers are stuck using Microsoft Word with lots of bolt-on plugins rather than a VSCode / Sublime equivalent.

There are tools. Enterprises use them. Also, some small-scale practice areas like family law have form generator tools.

Yeah - I was involved in helping a large company purchase one of these tools and it was a nightmare. The software was poorly made, and of course every corporation does things differently.

Part of the problem is that legal teams don't understand how this software works, and the companies that create it use salespeople who will promise all kinds of things, so you end up in the situation where an in-house team has been told it will cut down their hours by X%, the software isn't designed for whatever task it has been sold for, and it becomes a hack job to make it do so.

The areas like family law (or particularly executries) are great for document generators. Similarly in corporate where there is a lot more routine work. These have already come into law firms in a big way but it's not particularly innovative (though still welcome).

Re: Show HN: Crowdsourced freelance contract template, written in plain language

#66

Post by noobiemcfoob »

elliekelly wrote: post #59
tptacek wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsolicits are a common term in consulting MSAs --- though usually it's the client demanding them and not the consultant offering them unbidden. 3 out of every 5 clients of ours takes our unilateral indemnity clause (our legal was optimistic!) and simply reverses it so it works for the client and against us. I'm pretty close to offering mutual indemnification simply to avoid round trips. Anyways my point is that, as…

> I blame you. Entirely warranted. We're nothing but an expensive headache to everyone on both sides of the table.

Right up until you're not.

Re: Show HN: Crowdsourced freelance contract template, written in plain language

#67

Post by kemitchell »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #61
kemitchell wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obviously for the client's benefit. But additional turns of the agreement aren't good for anyone. Clients typically have the leverage to get this. I've included a fairly contractor-leaning formulation, which requires the client to act.

Unlike employees, clients generally want their contractors to have experience working with competitors. They also don’t want the contractor to disclose anything about their business or the project to anyone else, which is why they’ll never expect you to provide a competing clients list. If they ever start to inquire, that line of questioning is trivially shut down by pointing this out. You take confidentiality seriou…

You're absolutely right to connect terms about work for competing clients with terms about confidentiality. You're also right that the value of many independent consultants---including attorneys---derives directly from diverse experience within a competitive field.

However, the desire for experience with competitors doesn't exclude valid concerns about ongoing, concurrent relationships serving competitor-clients. To borrow from legal ethics, it's one problem to have information from one client that could be useful to another, and a distinguishable but related problem to face a conflict of interest, with both sides expecting undivided loyalty. Terms about work for competitors assume, practically, that confidentiality obligations will break down when the contractor works for both sides concurrently. We can't build Chinese Walls in our minds, or in small firms of a handful of people.

Back to the terms, note that "Early Termination" gives each side the power to terminate early, with a given number of day's notice, for no reason at all. The main effect of "Conflicts" is to require the contractor to notify the client of potentially concurrent work for a competitor. If the client has concerns, they can terminate immediately, instead of with n days' notice. It's fundamentally about ensuring the client the information they need to make use of their termination right.

Re: Show HN: Crowdsourced freelance contract template, written in plain language

#69

Post by chiefalchemist »

mikeryan wrote: post #44
chiefalchemist wrote: post #43

Presuming this isn't going to be used for anything five figures and up, then I'd say the more important document for a freelance gig is the Scope of Work. The crux of the SOW is expectations. The contract - for (smaller) freelance work - imho doesn't come into play unless the expectation set (or not) by the SOW goes sideways. While the contract defines the legal CYAs, etc, the SOW help define the relationship without…

This contract is a combo MSA/SOW. It covers both.

Fair enough. But based on experience, that's a suboptimal approach. To bury the SOW within a more legal doc is, for me, asking for trouble.

Re: Show HN: Crowdsourced freelance contract template, written in plain language

#70

Post by mikeryan »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #69
mikeryan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This contract is a combo MSA/SOW. It covers both.

Fair enough. But based on experience, that's a suboptimal approach. To bury the SOW within a more legal doc is, for me, asking for trouble.

Agreed ;-)
Post reply on HN