Core77

Flying by the seat of your pants is a pile of fun until you crash and burn; for all you freelance designers out there who never bother with contracts, trusting luck or the good graces of your clients to keep you safe from harm, have we got an article for you.

Over at Creative Seeds, Carl Alviani teams up with patent attorney Joe Makuch to give you the bare bones basics of legal protection for creative freelance work. If you don't know an NDA from an SLA, best take a look at this snippet:

The most immediately useful aspect of a contract is the degree to which it dispels uncertainty. A chat and a handshake are comforting, but it's remarkable how many slight differences in understanding can emerge once you start writing them down.

To begin with, do you want to use any of this work in your portfolio? Better get it in writing. Because so much creative work relies on confidentiality to maintain its market advantage, clients can be wary when it comes to use of the concepts you generate. It's not unheard of for a freelancer to be prohibited from publishing any images associated with a project, even after it's complete and out in the world. It's also not unheard of for a client to not care one way or the other, or to change their mind on what's permissible halfway through a project.

Even recent grads and occasional moonlighters without the deep pockets to engage a high-priced attorney have some recourse, it turns out:

The simplest sort of "contract" is just a clear list of agreed points followed by a short disclaimer. Makuch points out that simply adding two or three sentences to the bottom of a quote or Statement of Work can do much to protect the designer from liability; while not the same as a binding contract, it still holds significant legal weight should action be threatened...the disclaimer simply states that you, the Vendor, are not to be held liable for any damages claimed against the client as a result of the product's performance (obviously more of a concern for designers of physical products than print or web designers, but you'd be surprised).

Read the rest, and get schooled here.