(Editorial note: I originally published this over on the Hit Subscribe blog.)
As I mentioned in my last post, I'm planning to write a column aimed at freelancers and small agency owners. And since I made this decision, I've been practically bursting with ideas of what to write about, to the point where Jonathan Stark's daily writing habit concept seems highly attainable. (Though ironically I've posted none for months because of a 2-week vacation that turned into a 4-week ordeal, and then the subsequent catch-up from a month off).
For whatever reason, the first and most insistent topic that bubbled up was how to navigate, or not navigate, contracts as a freelancer or small agency.
I think maybe this is because so much advice out there, swapped around by freelancers on venues like reddit, is genuinely and comically atrocious. It's a bemusing mélange of cargo culting (more on this shortly), arm-chair lawyering and good old-fashioned posturing that is completely unmoored from any legal, or more importantly, realpolitik, reality.
But the real danger in taking any of this advice, for you, as a freelancer or small agency, isn't a legal danger -- it's a danger that you'll look ridiculous to the clients you're presumably hoping to impress.
