Most freelance contracts fail on payment, not on law.
Freelancers rarely get hurt by a missing indemnity. They get hurt by unlimited revisions, a client who disappears mid-project, and an invoice that is ninety days late with nothing in the agreement about it. A freelance contract should be short, and the short version should spend its length on those three things.
Every clause, and what it is doing there.
Worth having as a checklist whatever you draft it in. The provisions are the reason the agreement works; the formatting is not.
| 01Parties and the work | Who, and what is being made. Name the deliverables and their format, because "a website" and "a website" turn out to be different things. |
|---|---|
| 02Schedule and dependencies | Dates, and what you need from the client to hit them. A dependency that is not written down becomes your delay. |
| 03Fee and payment terms | Amount, deposit, when each payment falls due, and the payment window. A deposit before work starts is normal and is the single most effective clause in the document. |
| 04Late payment | Interest or a fixed fee, and the right to pause work. Without it, late payment carries no consequence and behaves accordingly. |
| 05Revisions | How many rounds are included and what happens after. Unlimited revisions is not generosity, it is an unpriced liability. |
| 06Change requests | How out-of-scope work is priced and approved. One sentence prevents most freelance disputes. |
| 07Intellectual property | Ownership transfers on full payment, not on delivery. This one clause is why the section exists. |
| 08Kill fee and cancellation | What is payable if the client cancels partway. Commonly the deposit plus work completed. |
| 09Portfolio rights | Whether you may show the work. Ask for it; it is usually granted and almost never offered. |
| 10Governing law | Your jurisdiction if you can get it. |
The parts no template can decide.
Deposit size
Commonly 25% to 50% up front, higher for new clients.
Revision rounds
Two or three is typical, with an hourly or per-round rate after.
Payment schedule
On completion, split by milestone, or monthly for longer work.
IP terms
Full transfer on payment, or a licence for a defined use, which is common in illustration and photography.
What a downloaded contract template still leaves you to do
The clauses you delete are the risk
Generic contracts carry provisions for situations you are not in, so the instinct is to cut whatever looks unnecessary. That is how the liability cap, the cure period and the survival clause go missing, and none of them is missed until it matters.
Nothing reconciles the terms with each other
Payment says milestones, termination says thirty days, and acceptance says nothing. A template cannot notice that the three clauses disagree, because it was written before your deal existed.
The signed copy goes into a folder
A contract in storage is a contract nobody can query. The notice period, the renewal date and the value are in the text, which means they are nowhere you will look in eighteen months.
The clauses people cut by mistake.
Generic agreements carry provisions for situations you are not in, so the instinct is to delete whatever looks surplus. These are the ones to keep.
- IP transferring on payment rather than on delivery.
- A cap on revision rounds.
- A kill fee, so cancellation is not free.
- Portfolio and credit rights.
- What happens when the client goes quiet: a deemed-acceptance period after delivery.
Drafting one in seconds, and keeping it afterwards
One sentence like this is enough: Freelance brand identity for Northwind, $6,000, 50% deposit, two revision rounds then $150 an hour, IP transfers on final payment, I can show it in my portfolio.
- Describe the arrangement, not the document. "Mutual NDA with Northwind before the pilot, three years, Delaware law." It works out what kind of agreement this is and what it has to contain.
- It asks only what genuinely changes the terms. Mutual or one-way. Term. Who signs and in what order. Two tappable questions rather than a form, and your answers become defaults.
- Your own wording, if you have it. Import existing paper from PDF or DOCX and it becomes an editable template. Settings carries a playbook in free text the AI obeys, so a rule like never agree to unlimited liability holds on every document.
- Signed against a specific version. Each party signs wording identified by its content hash, with email verification and a certificate of completion on the final PDF.
- Then it is read back into fields. Parties, dates, renewal, notice period, value, governing law and obligations are extracted on completion, and you are warned before the notice window closes.
Straight answers.
Do I need a contract for small freelance jobs?
Yes, and it can be one page. The value is not in the legal machinery, it is in having written down the deposit, the number of revisions and when payment is due. Those three lines prevent most of what actually goes wrong.
When should IP transfer to the client?
On full payment, not on delivery. If ownership passes when you hand the files over, an unpaid invoice leaves you with no leverage and the client with the work.
What is a kill fee?
A payment due if the client cancels partway through. Commonly the deposit plus the value of work completed. Without one, a cancelled project can mean weeks of work and nothing to show for it.
Can I send and sign it without printing anything?
Yes. Describe the job, get the contract back drafted, send it as a link, and the client signs in their browser on a phone. Electronic signature is binding under the ESIGN Act and eIDAS, and the free plan covers three documents a month.
Not legal advice. This page describes what agreements of this kind usually contain; it is not advice on your circumstances and cannot tell you whether something is enforceable where you are. Have anything you send repeatedly reviewed once by a lawyer, then draft against it.
Contract template
A contract template gives you headings. The deal is in the gaps.
NDA template
An NDA is short, which is why the wrong one is easy to sign.
Consulting agreement
A consulting agreement is a services contract with four extra arguments.
Business proposal
A proposal is not a description of your company.
Project proposal
A project proposal has to answer "why now" before "how much".
Construction proposal
In construction, the proposal is the argument you will have later.
Draft it, sign it, and still know about it in a year.
Describe the arrangement and get the agreement back drafted. Signed terms are read into fields, so the renewal does not surprise you. Three a month, free.
Create one free