<story><title>Show HN: Crowdsourced freelance contract template, written in plain language</title><url>https://web.archive.org/web/20190116003031/https://plainfreelancecontract.com/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>dang</author><text>(4-1&amp;#x2F;2 years later: The submitted URL was &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;plainfreelancecontract.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;plainfreelancecontract.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;, but it links to malware now, so I&amp;#x27;ve replaced it with an archive.org link.)</text></comment>
<story><title>Show HN: Crowdsourced freelance contract template, written in plain language</title><url>https://web.archive.org/web/20190116003031/https://plainfreelancecontract.com/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ruairidhwm</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve seen quite a few of these and whilst I love the idea, they usually have a ton of problems in them.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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 different contractual implications to choosing Scotland. Ditto for states in the USA. A layperson won&amp;#x27;t know this, and a lawyer would need to review the provisions.&lt;p&gt;There are also a ton of generalised terms in this document where things like &amp;#x27;intellectual property rights&amp;#x27; aren&amp;#x27;t defined. These aren&amp;#x27;t generic terms and in the event of a dispute, language really matters. There is a reason why contracts are much longer when professionally written.&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t to attack the idea, I&amp;#x27;m hugely in favour of open access to legal documentation, but people need to realise that most legal work is bespoke - even if law firms do it on a &amp;#x27;churn&amp;#x27; basis. This is a great effort to further open law but it&amp;#x27;s dangerous for people to rely on this.&lt;p&gt;Source: I&amp;#x27;m a software engineer and a qualified lawyer</text></comment>