When writers become lawyers – how to agree terms with a client

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Every freelance writer has a story about the project from hell. Mine involves writing a 7,000-word in-house magazine in a month. By the third issue, thanks to unreasonableness from the client, it was 14,000 words in ten days. For the same money. There wasn’t a fourth issue.

So how do you avoid situations where the client:

Demands more work than they will pay for
Changes their mind a lot
Doesn’t give feedback in a timely way
Won’t pay on time
Doesn’t give you the information you need
Takes their sweet time but holds you to the original deadline
Wants everything yesterday

I have tried several strategies:

Pick good clients (this is the best approach)
Get part-payment up front (not so easy)
Sign a contract (often difficult, especially with multi-nationals who have their own)
Make it really easy and painless for a client to walk away from a project. Besides being a reassurance for the client, helping them end a dysfunctional project early can be a blessing.
Agree on a detailed brief (easier to do). I like to write the brief based on discussions with clients and tell them I’m doing them a favour by saving them the time it would take to do it themselves.
Have detailed terms and conditions and include them in the brief, proposal, email etc. This is the cover-my-ass legal stuff. (I do this. Here it is. But it’s separate from the briefing process.)

Nobody likes a cry baby. I’ve picked up several projects from clients who were exasperated with their previous copywriter or agency because all they ever did is moan, quibble and cavil.

As a writer you need a contract to deal with big legal things like payment, rights, errors and omissions. You also need professional indemnity insurance so you don’t lose your house if you really screw things up.

But you can’t legislate for honesty, common sense, courtesy or efficiency. So, in my view, don’t try. (Your mileage may vary. I’m not a lawyer. Get legal advice for yourself. Don’t run with scissors.)

The trick is to differentiate between clients who are irredeemably bad (and drop them), clients who occasionally do annoying things (but who can be educated) and clients who are wonderful (and sometimes need you to pull a rabbit out of a hat).

A friend sent me a link to this article about the ideal writer contract. It’s good and I like the style. But I think it blurs the line between being a contract to cover legal stuff and trying to deal with the education, planning and briefing part of a client relationship. Keep the two parts separate and you’ll be a lot happier.

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