Send us your contracts — please
Freelancers: The Freelance Committee needs your help
In order to help freelancers navigate the labyrinth of contracts and legalese — and increase their chance of negotiating reasonable and fair terms — the Freelance Committee is undertaking the task of building a reference contracts database. Members helping with this effort are: Jennie Dusheck, Jill Adams, Jennifer Wettlaufer, Ricki Lewis and DeLene Beeland. Ideally this database will be available to NASW members only, will be searchable by key terms, will contain a glossary, and will be chock full of useful contracts and clauses — both good and bad, so we can learn from each other's successes and trials.
To help out, please submit your relevant writing contracts or clauses from the last three years.
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Before sending them, please note the following:
Ideally, send word processing document files (Word, Pages or text); but we would rather have PDFs than no contract.
If you need to redact sensitive information, we understand. The more you leave in, however, the more useful the database will be to others. You can contact Jennie Dusheck at dusheck@gmail.com to work with you on an approach that feels comfortable. We expect you to leave out your name, but hope you can include the name of the client.
At the top of your submission, please list a few things that will help us out (and in this order would be even better!):
Year the contract was offered/signed.
What type of client the contract is for (newspaper, magazine, book, NGO, research institution, pharma company, etc.).
What type of rights were sold (First North American rights, all rights, work made for hire, etc).
Length of time it took to negotiate the contract.
Clauses you negotiated.
Before and after versions if you negotiated a clause.
Please send your submissions to DeLene Beeland at delene@nasw.org.
Thank you!
Freelance Committee: Contracts database subcommittee
RE: Send us your contracts — please
Written by Lorraine Hopping Egan on Oct 15, 2012 Blog
This will be a tremendous resource—and provide some much-needed leverage! Thank you all!
You might want to contact the Authors Guild, which reviews contracts for members as part of the benefits and asks only for a copy of the signed contract in return. They track clauses (especially newly introduced ones, the whole e-rights mess) and negotiated changes and would likely take an interest in this project. Perhaps an exchange of some sort? Anita Fore afore@authorsguild.com 212-563-5904.
I'll dig through my samples and see what I can offer.
RE: Send us your contracts — please
Written by T. DeLene Beeland on Oct 15, 2012 Blog
Thank you for pointing us to this resource, Lorraine! I will bring this back to the subcommittee. I hope to hear from you about your contracts soon! - DeLene
RE: Send us your contracts — please
Written by Caroline Leopold on Oct 16, 2012
Have you talked to a lawyer about whether contract sharing (with redacted information) is prudent and would not open people up to liability? I would love to share my contracts to be helpful. But I have two concerns.
First, protecting confidentiality. I have signed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in which I vow not to share proprietary information. I think a contract contains privileged information, even when masked, although I am not certain. The second issue is sharing contracts may veer in the territory of unlicensed legal advice.
I know I sound like a stickler, but what I do/write can open me up to a liability. Therefore, I am a bit scared of the legalese I sign. I want to make sure I protect myself and my fellow freelancers.
RE: Send us your contracts — please
Written by T. DeLene Beeland on Oct 17, 2012 Blog
Hello Caroline, yes, we contacted a lawyer who deals with intellectual property law and we were told that once a contractor signs or otherwise modifies a contract it becomes the property of both parties. Unless there is a non-disclosure clause, the signee is legally able to share the content of the contract by republishing it elsewhere if they desire. If you've signed a NDA, we're not asking you to break it. As to your second point, my understanding was that the legal consult we were given did not deem contract sharing as offering unlicensed legal advice. Jennie Dusheck can further comment on this, as she is the one who dealt with the lawyer. Best regards, DeLene
RE: Send us your contracts — please
Written by Pieter Droppert on Oct 16, 2012 Blog
If the purpose of this project is "to help freelancers navigate the labyrinth of contracts and legalese" then to me what is required is a resource that explains standard contract clauses, offers insight into what they mean in plain language and suggests areas for possible negotiation.
You can find lots of commercial contracts online e.g. in the SEC/EDGAR database so I don't think sharing of contracts per-se is an issue, so long as there is no restriction on doing this in the contract and there is redaction or removal of confidential, proprietary or personal information.
However, I am not sure that a contract database has a lot of value on its own. To me it's the interpretation of contractual clauses that matters.
I am also not sure of the value of asking members to provide before and after versions of a clause. This could just showcase ineffectual or poor drafting that is then copied or perpetuated by others.
So how will the database highlight the "good and bad" and who will make this determination?
Offering advice to others on what constitutes a "good" contract clause as opposed to a "bad" one may require the exercise of legal judgment, and as already commented could raise concerns about the unauthorized practice of law if not done by a lawyer.
RE: Send us your contracts — please
Written by T. DeLene Beeland on Oct 17, 2012 Blog
Hello Pieter, part of our proposal for this project did include also offering a glossary of contract terms to help freelancers to better understand what different clauses mean. But first we need to gather up contracts to get the database underway. The glossary will come next! So yes, we are addressing this too. The NASW does believe there is value in freelancers being able to access a membership-only database, I'm sorry you disagree, but overall we have recieved quite a lot of positive response and excitement about this project. The value of before/after versions is to see how others have successfully negotiated for better contract terms, altered potentially harmful clauses, and so on. Best regards, DeLene
RE: Send us your contracts — please
Written by Jennie Dusheck on Oct 24, 2012 Blog
Hi Pieter, Thanks for your suggestions. It's certainly true that what is a good or bad clause (or an indifferent one) depends on someone's personal circumstances. We don't intend to practice law, but only give writers the resources to think about contracts, an area of the freelance business that can be pretty intimidating. We plan to have an attorney vet the glossary and we'll assemble other resources people can turn to. We'll also be clear that this is informational only, not a professional diagnosis. Think of this as more like a wellness column than a medical opinion. Best regards, Jennie Dusheck