[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Where can I find good legal documents?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Where can I find good legal documents?
Whenever I start a new (side) project, getting the website set up
with T&C, Privacy Policy, etc. is a pain point. Here are a couple
sources I've found: - Common Paper (NDA, TOS, SLA, DPA, CSA, ...)
- YC Safe (Fundraising) - Clerky (Fundraising, Employment, ...)
Looking for more resources like these.
Author : yonom
Score : 252 points
Date : 2024-01-16 12:27 UTC (10 hours ago)
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Here are some early Startup related ideas, links, tools that I
| gather to not repeat my answers to founders asking for them. For
| Legals, please go to https://docs.inboxstartup.com/operate/legal
|
| Quite a lot of the founders from the mentioned
| links/startup/companies are friends or part of a cohort. This is
| a like an Inbox and I might need to keep cleaning them up.
| arshakarap wrote:
| There are some templates that might be helpful here:
| https://www.techcontracts.com/contracts
|
| However, if you want to start something big, it's better to find
| a lawyer to draft your legal documents, especially the ones you
| publish online (from a lawyer).
| rossant wrote:
| You could try Termly: https://termly.io/
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Free legal documents are worth what you pay for them.
| born2discover wrote:
| This actually depends. If you need something specific, tailored
| to your needs and operational niche, then obviously you can not
| forego a visit to a lawyer. However, for some documents, a
| reputable template is more than enough. (As even lawyers rarely
| draft "bespoke" documents for every client and happen to use a
| templated text more often than not).
| kube-system wrote:
| It is definitely possible. But it is not always trivial to
| know which solution you need without the advice of a lawyer.
| Lawyers use templates a lot, but they also know which
| templates work in which scenarios and in which jurisdictions.
|
| Personally I'd be more comfortable using templates on my own
| for generic business documents, and less comfortable using
| them for areas of the law that vary greatly by state, like
| landlord/tenant law, or employment law.
| PeterisP wrote:
| You have a point, but it's important to note that the
| template needs to be _local_ to you. Laws aren 't global,
| what is an appropriate T&C for a service hosted in USA won't
| be okay for a service hosted in UK or Singapore, and even
| within USA differences in state laws sometimes are critical,
| so you need to ensure that you're not getting a template
| aimed at somewhere else.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Illinois (biometric laws) come to mind
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Even when I've ended up needing a lawyer (albeit for private
| legal transactions like estate planning) going through the
| process of finding a template, customizing it to what I
| wanted, and thinking through as much as I could was
| invaluable. The subject matter can be complex and lawyers are
| expensive, paid by time, and (in my experience) have a habit
| of bulldozing through explanations to clients; the more prep
| you've done ahead of time the more value you can get out of
| your lawyer time (e.g. by knowing what questions to ask and
| having a clear picture of the issues at hand).
| phonon wrote:
| https://www.cooleygo.com/documents/
| gumby wrote:
| Wilmerhale has a document generator for a lot of what you need.
| No need to log in, create an account etc. I use these.
| aristofun wrote:
| I couldn't find any generator on their site
| gumby wrote:
| Try this: https://launch.wilmerhale.com/#bannerExplore and
| scroll down to a bubble called "Document generator". Or just
| search for "launchpad" on their site.
| aristofun wrote:
| thank you!
| haebom wrote:
| I had a similar problem and found that the ones I made from free
| sites or using different terminology are often wrong or say the
| wrong things that don't fit our service. In the end, we
| outsourced it to a professional legal service. (The ones that
| make them for free or for a fraction of the cost are often
| templated and fill-in-the-blank, which is attractive, but has
| obvious limitations).
| smohnot wrote:
| For those not familiar: Common Paper
| https://commonpaper.com/standards/ seems to have the best free
| standard docs.
|
| Here's the post where they describe it
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36043944
|
| here's another one: https://www.avodocs.com/
| jakestein wrote:
| Thanks for the mention and kind words! I'm one of the
| cofounders of Common Paper, happy to answer any questions.
|
| Our docs are free, released under creative comments, have been
| downloaded more than 17,000 times and used to close millions of
| dollars worth of deals.
|
| If you're not sure what kind of contract you need, this blog
| post might help:
|
| https://commonpaper.com/blog/saas-contracts/
| samstave wrote:
| Do you know of any similar resources in the Family Law area?
| (not sure how to specifically word my question, but helping
| someone with some custody related issues - and wondering if
| there is some resource I could be aware of to help?)
|
| Else, was going to turn to the GPTs and see what they may
| muster, but any even general direction pointers would be
| appreciated?
| chadash wrote:
| IANAL, but there are some things where you should really
| get expert advice. Child custody is one of them.
|
| I think with legal docs generally, you have to decide what
| the stakes are and act accordingly. In general, keep in
| mind that most lawyers won't take a case unless there's
| someone with deep pockets to sue. So for that $20k loan you
| give to a friend, a boilerplate template is fine; if they
| don't want to pay you back, a lawsuit is gonna cost you
| more than the loan anyway. You've got a new startup for
| website monitoring with 20 customers? Worry about growing
| your userbase, not the remote chance that you get sued and
| something in the boilerplate docs you used wasn't worded
| properly (of course, once you raise significant money or
| have significant revenue, those legal docs become much more
| important, and also this doesn't apply if you are working
| on something with significant risk, such as a medical
| device).
|
| But child custody isn't one of those things. It is high
| stakes, the chances that your counterparty will sue you are
| very high, and a bad outcome might be one of the worst
| things that can happen to you. Personally, the possibility
| of losing custody of my children would be much more
| worrying to me than any financial lawsuit.
| samstave wrote:
| I was more looking for properly formatting a document for
| filings was all?
|
| Maybe thats a poor example - but forms help thats not
| spammy, but also not "starting a business related"
|
| Legal resources online all seem so "Better Call Saul"
| quality. Like going to a used car lot.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I have a friend in a messy divorce. With custody, all
| rational thought has gone out the window. Cost of
| lawyers? Doesn't matter, sue! Need to comply or get
| fined? Don't care. Court ordered therapy? Don't feel like
| it.
|
| The pockets that fund this behavior will be empty at some
| point. But until then, primal irrational impulses are
| running the show.
|
| In a case like that, the difference between the right
| legal docs and the mostly right docs would be huge.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Legal divorce proceedings are like wedding planning,
| except every professional around you instead has a
| financial incentive to make you as angry and mean as
| possible, because it means more billable hours.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I have seen hundreds of thousands of dollars incinerated
| on legal fees due to this. Very accurate!
| dylan604 wrote:
| > was going to turn to the GPTs
|
| this seems ripe for disaster. hopefully, you weren't
| serious. as with all things, I'd really hope anything in
| the realm of legal documents from GPT would be then
| consulted with an actual lawyer
| samstave wrote:
| Sorry - I am looking for properly formatting, the fact
| that their case is custody was useless info I guess...
|
| I just want to ensure that documents are formatted
| properly... that was all.
| dylan604 wrote:
| just to pile on, but forgoing a lawyer in a custody case
| is the definition of not smart. just don't do it.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| In a _contentious_ custody case, this is very true. If
| the parents are splitting up and agree on a plan that
| they both like, the lawyer becomes far less necessary.
| Although then the lawyer is very cheap and probably still
| worth it.
| jakestein wrote:
| Unfortunately, I don't know of any resource besides an
| attorney that would help with a custody issue. I'm sure
| that's rough, and I hope things turn out as well as
| possible for your friend and their family. A few other
| resources that are outside the commercial realm are:
|
| https://helloprenup.com/ https://hellodivorce.com/
| https://www.getdynasty.com/ https://trustandwill.com/
|
| I haven't personally used those services, but the founders
| are great
| martincmartin wrote:
| I've had luck with Nolo legal documents, for things like a
| simple will when I was young and my estate was simple.
|
| https://www.nolo.com/
| smeej wrote:
| I'm about 99% sure calling it "creative comments" is just a
| brain slip (or TTS error) and you meant "creative commons,"
| but because that really would be a creative change, and the
| 1% chance that I'm wrong has a really big risk when dealing
| with a company familiar with legal documents, I just want to
| confirm?
| jakestein wrote:
| Thanks for checking, and unfortunately it seems like my
| original comment is no longer editable. I'd like to blame
| autocorrect, but I think I was actually typing before I had
| my coffee this morning
|
| All of our standard agreements are released under the
| Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license. More details on that
| license here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
| navigate8310 wrote:
| Are there any templates for businesses that are engaged in
| manufacturing bespoke electrical components for their B2B
| customers?
| jakestein wrote:
| We're focused on B2B software companies, so we don't have
| any templates for that use case. I'm not aware of publicly
| available templates serving bespoke manufacturers, but I'd
| love to learn about them if you find any
| chris-orgmenta wrote:
| > We're focused on B2B software companies
|
| Out of interest, is that a permanent(ish) decision, or
| are you intending to use that as a spring board,
| eventually aiming for industry-agnostic?
|
| Thanks
| jakestein wrote:
| In the long term, we'll expand out from that. It will be
| industry by industry, since the contracts you need for eg
| manufacturing or catering are going to be very different
| than software.
|
| Some of our agreements, like the NDA, are already used in
| other industries since they are more industry agnostic
| smcavinney1 wrote:
| I've saved so much time using CommonPaper at my company. Many
| agreements are still negotiated, but even the cover-page
| concept makes it that much easier to understand what is being
| argued.
| jakestein wrote:
| Thank you!
| pdq wrote:
| Kyle Mitchell is a lawyer that can program, and has done a ton of
| open source work on legal docs: https://projects.kemitchell.com/
|
| For example, here are his employment/hiring docs:
| https://squareoneforms.com/
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Nobody suggesting NoLo?
|
| https://store.nolo.com/products/online-legal-forms
| noodlesUK wrote:
| Do any of these resources target multiple different countries?
| The requirements for these kinds of documents tend to vary
| wildly, even between countries with similar legal traditions in
| the Anglosphere.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I had edited/signed a lot of documents for my service company,
| other companies I consulted with, and quite a few of the
| Startups I was part of. The idea is to keep the generic ones as
| possible and then look for the part particular to the country's
| legalities.
|
| For instance, for NDA, I will see that "in the case of dispute,
| the legal court will be this city/country." I just found a
| template that can be adapted - https://www.onenda.org
|
| I have done this for MSA (Master Service Agreement) and a lot
| of Statment of Work (SOW) for projects. However, for employment
| and contracts, I let the lawyers handle it.
|
| Once you are big, growing, and important enough, you are not
| asking her on HackerNews; you talk to your lawyers. Before
| that, most agreements are good to stay afloat till the next
| stage.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| In terms of a privacy policy, the UK ICO has a good starting
| point for UK based organisations: https://ico.org.uk/for-
| organisations/advice-for-small-organi...
|
| It covers the basics of GDPR compliance.
| thrillgore wrote:
| A lawyer. I would try contacting a local startup incubator to see
| if they have any recommendations before you start googling or
| looking up Avvo.
|
| I also found Termly helpful for a first Privacy Policy especially
| through their wizard, which clears up all your GDPR/CCPA matters,
| but you want a professional to look this over at some point.
| j45 wrote:
| It's critical to only hire a lawyer who has exact and recent
| experience with what you need in tech/startups, or you're
| paying to educate them and things might not be as good as they
| could be because they are new to it.
| mushufasa wrote:
| Public companies have to file a lot of documents with the SEC,
| and often contracts get disclosed. Paid services such as
| Bloomberg Law are essentially glorified search engines on this
| free public dataset.
| Digory wrote:
| Surprised I had to scroll this far down to find this. Options?
| Employment contracts? The SEC database is golden.
|
| If you're not doing well enough to pay the lawyer for custom
| advice, use the example of people who paid to get it right for
| them.
| philip1209 wrote:
| Basecamp has their policies on Github under a "CC BY 4.0 DEED"
| license, though it looks like they've archived the repo:
| https://github.com/basecamp/policies
| trevyn wrote:
| Legal systems are code execution for people who can't code. Use
| accordingly.
| corford wrote:
| https://www.termsfeed.com/ is handy for TOS, T&C, Privacy
| Policies etc.
|
| For UK orientated legalese, https://simply-docs.co.uk/ is quite
| useful for certain things.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > Where can I find good legal documents?
|
| A lawyer. A lawyer. A lawyer. A lawyer. END OF STORY.
|
| And I'm saying that from a perspective of someone who used to use
| free/cheap template docs a long time ago.
|
| The hard reality is that free/cheap ready-made docs are highly
| unlikely to be suitable for your business context for one or more
| of the following reasons: - Jurisdiction
| of you or your clients - Insurance requirements
| from your insurer or your clients insurer - Clauses
| not there that should be there - Clauses there that
| are not good enough - Clauses there that should not
| be there
|
| Free/cheap docs are all fun and games until the shit hits the fan
| and you need to rely on them. Its at that point you'll find
| yourself wishing you ponied up for a lawyer. Trust me, been
| there, done that, got the postcard, never again.
|
| Paying a lawyer to help you with legal documents is a necessary
| business expense. Just like paying taxes, either you pay upfront
| or you pay the penalty later.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Exactly. These free legal documents are great--until you have
| to litigate one.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Extending this thread because it costs maybe max 2 hours of
| consult time with a lawyer to put one together. $500 today
| can save you from a $5M lawsuit tomorrow.
|
| And even then you should still read it and become intimately
| knowledgeable with each provision
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > $500 today can save you from a $5M lawsuit tomorrow.
|
| Yup. I've had one or two clients make all sorts of threats
| at me, accusing me of stuff when it was caused by their
| inactions.
|
| But then funnily enough, when they finally get round to
| paying their lawyers to look at the contract they signed,
| they find they don't have a leg to stand on or at least
| they'll struggle to make a worthwhile case.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| My liability insurance asks who drafts the legal
| agreements in engagements and, if it is my company, they
| explicitly ask if a lawyer is involved.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > My liability insurance asks who drafts the legal
| agreements in engagements and, if it is my company, they
| explicitly ask if a lawyer is involved.
|
| Yup.
|
| This is precisely one of the points I was getting at.
|
| If your business has liability insurance and _ESPECIALLY_
| if your business has professional indemnity insurance,
| then really you have zero option but to pay a lawyer to
| draft a contract.
|
| Read the proposal form you signed. Read the small print
| of the insurance. And most important of all, remember how
| insurance works, the insurance company expects you to
| have made a reasonable effort to mitigate your losses.
|
| By being a cheapskate and using a free/cheap ready-made
| template from the internet, the insurance company would
| be well within their rights to argue that you had not
| made a reasonable effort to mitigate your losses and the
| loss adjusters will adjust your payout downwards
| accordingly.
| anjel wrote:
| The advice is golden, however the hourly rate is about ten
| years old. Expect to pay a minimum of $400 hourly rate.
| (Free initial telephone consults are still easy to find and
| I have cumulatively learned a lot stacking multiple free
| consults together)
| CPLX wrote:
| This isn't necessarily true.
|
| I've spent six figures on legal fees easily, and I also use
| templates and off the shelf stuff all the time. Clerky is a
| good resource and is fine for most core stuff.
|
| You just can't pay lawyers every time you do everything, it's a
| waste of resources for small simple businesses that may never
| go anywhere. And the other issues is EVEN IF YOU DO that
| doesn't guarantee anything, most lawyers are just using THEIR
| templates anyways and charging more. If you don't know what to
| ask for you and don't yet understand the business dynamics you
| really get almost no value add from having an actual lawyer.
|
| I'm currently paying a law firm about $20k to rewrite a bunch
| of docs that I used templates for about 5 years ago. I consider
| that a success, the business now has millions in revenue and
| can afford it and it's fine. That's a pretty normal sequence of
| events in business.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > it's a waste of resources for small simple businesses that
| may never go anywhere.
|
| As per my original post. That statement is one made from the
| comfortable armchair of somebody who has not had to litigate
| off the back of a free/cheap ready-made contract.
|
| What _is_ a waste of resources is paying a lawyer to try to
| get you off the hook for something that could have reasonably
| been in the contract in the first place had you had it
| drafted for your specific business context rather than
| relying on some shit internet template.
|
| > most lawyers are just using THEIR templates anyways and
| charging more.
|
| This is bullshit and you know it.
|
| Yes, lawyers use base templates, but that's because there are
| some clauses that will always need to be there no matter
| what. However the devil is in the details and the lawyers
| also sit down with you to understand your business context
| and those templates get edited, sometimes heavily edited
| depending on the business context.
|
| The point is that you are paying the lawyer for their
| experience. They know what should be kept in the template.
| They know what should be removed from the template. They know
| what should be added to the template AND they know how to add
| stuff to the templates in a legally correct manner.
|
| You claim to have spent time with lawyers drafting legal
| documents, ergo you should know that and not spread FUD.
| CPLX wrote:
| Are you a lawyer? Only lawyers with something to sell or
| people working entirely in hypotheticals talk like this.
|
| People who have actually hired lawyers and litigated things
| know what a shit show it all is.
|
| > As per my original post. That statement is one made from
| the comfortable armchair of somebody who has not had to
| litigate off the back of a free/cheap ready-made contract.
|
| I've done exactly that. You can create a contract by two
| people writing down what they agree on in bullet points and
| have it be binding and litigate it if you want instead too.
| It's actually pretty normal. Legal docs aren't magic,
| they're words that represent agreement between humans, and
| in litigation usually what's going on is a bunch of humans
| trying to figure out which narrative best represents the
| actual underlying agreement between the people in question.
|
| > What is a waste of resources is paying a lawyer to try to
| get you off the hook for something that could have
| reasonably been in the contract in the first place had you
| had it drafted for your specific business context rather
| than relying on some shit internet template.
|
| Even more of a waste of resources is paying a lawyer to
| sort of kind of pay attention for a few minutes to your
| requests before assuming you're like some other situation
| he's seen and giving you that person's template and
| charging you $3,500. Which is generally what happens to
| people if they don't know what they're doing.
|
| Or, alternately, paying $25,000 for a real firm with domain
| expertise who do actually listen to you and successfully
| craft a great customized document that does in fact
| slightly improve on the template you would have used. And
| then none of those things ever actually happen and it
| doesn't end up mattering anyways.
|
| > Yes, lawyers use base templates, but that's because there
| are some clauses that will always need to be there no
| matter what. However the devil is in the details and the
| lawyers also sit down with you to understand your business
| context and those templates get edited, sometimes heavily
| edited depending on the business context.
|
| > The point is that you are paying the lawyer for their
| experience. They know what should be kept in the template.
| They know what should be removed from the template. They
| know what should be added to the template AND they know how
| to add stuff to the templates in a legally correct manner.
|
| Yeah sure, that's possible. But in order to get good legal
| work you have to know what to ask for, and you have to be
| working with the right lawyer.
|
| Most people aren't going to be good at either of those two
| things, and working from templates is quite likely to lead
| to _better_ outcomes for those people at a tiny fraction of
| the cost.
| PatentlyDC123 wrote:
| You make great points. One of my law professors always
| said, "clear communication makes for long relationships."
| He was a small town lawyer that explained our job
| included: - making sure both parties understood exactly
| what the contract meant (legally, businesswise, etc.),
| and - asking the parties to talk through any issues
| (business, legal, etc.) that could arise and how they
| might want to handle the issue.
|
| Different parties cover these two points in all sorts of
| ways. You're right, it doesn't necessarily make sense to
| hire an attorney when the parties are on equal footing,
| experienced, clearly understand each other's duties, and
| don't really disagree on how to proceed should an issue
| arise.
|
| It's kind of like hiring a designer/firm for a website.
| Some will overcharge for a Wordpress template or they
| might charge big fees to give you a robust solution that
| is extreme overkill for your application. But, if you
| find the right designer/attorney, they will work with you
| to meet your financial and business needs. That seems to
| be the hardest part.
| telebell wrote:
| I agree with what lots have written here. The biglaw firms that
| have notable tech practices are good and have resources for brand
| new startups. For example, CooleyGo or Latham Drive or Wilson
| Sonsini's term sheet generator. For PPs and Terms, I tend to
| start with competitor services and see how theirs are
| written/compare clauses. The more established the company, the
| more likely it is that you can rely on them to have had their own
| docs vetted by decent attorneys, though of course quality isn't
| guaranteed. I have used TermsFeed as a starting point before.
|
| For employment matters, SHRM's "Tools and Samples" resources are
| good.
|
| Thompson Reuters has a free 7 day trial of their "Practical Law"
| product, though I haven't explored it personally.
|
| Techcontracts.com is a good resource.
|
| ETA: these are all starting points - the docs always have to be
| reviewed and modified for your particular circumstances. But
| they're reasonable for the first draft.
|
| (I do outside general counsel work for small startups)
|
| Good luck!
| amelius wrote:
| You mean templates ...
| redcobra762 wrote:
| ChatGPT can produce a pretty good ToS/privacy policy in a pinch.
| fratimo66 wrote:
| I work for iubenda (https://www.iubenda.com/) and it's a precious
| tool for website compliance. I was a user myself before joining
| the team.
|
| You can get: Privacy Policy/T&C/Cookie and Consent Banner as well
| as a Consent Database tool.
|
| The onboarding starts with a scan of your website, and you are
| suggested to use specific configurations based on the legislation
| that will apply to your website. Moreover, iubenda scans
| regularly your website and checks for non-compliance clues (e.g.
| a missing service in your privacy policy).
|
| Pricing: there's a free plan for you to start with a basic
| configuration + pay as you grow.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| You can also use one of those lawyer services you pay for
| monthly, inuse mine to review things like this occasionally.
| spacecadet wrote:
| Great question! I updated my privacy policy last year and wanted
| to leverage more "open" policies, but found that world to be lack
| and instead pooled a bunch I appreciated and asked my laywer to
| emulate. Wasnt the cheapest approach, but Im happy-
| bradvl wrote:
| CooleyGo is great: https://www.cooleygo.com/documents/
| existential wrote:
| If you're in the UK, https://seedlegals.com is the place for all
| of this.
|
| And, there's lots of resources and data, like this:
| https://seedlegals.com/termometer/
| danielrhodes wrote:
| The world would be a better place if we could all just be happy
| with standardized legal agreements: the pros/cons are easier to
| know ahead of time for both parties, you don't need much legal
| advice around them, and there isn't a lot of legal busy work that
| nobody really wants to do (even lawyers).
|
| Having said that, the common answer from a lawyer of "it depends"
| is often true: there are often a lot of nuances that many people
| don't consider. For example you would think a mutual NDA should
| be pretty standard, but as it turns out it can be really complex.
| duckmysick wrote:
| Here's something related that I've been wondering about: what if
| the client is from another country? Let's say the company is from
| the Netherlands and they are selling a service to another company
| in the US.
|
| Which country's law should apply? Do they get a Dutch or an
| American lawyer? Is the contract written in Dutch or English (or
| both)? In case of a legal dispute, which court do they go to? Is
| the invoice in dollars or euros?
| mannyv wrote:
| Having worked at a few places with international clients, I can
| tell you that nobody in their right mind would sue someone
| located overseas if they can help it.
|
| A few year ago international lawyers were charging about 400/hr
| for contract review services. Actually filing a lawsuit would
| be prohibitively expensive for a client unless the amounts in
| question were super-large (probably around 1m or more).
|
| International agreements for small companies are really a show
| of good faith. In reality it's money-up-front and be prepared
| to turn down the service on non-payment.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-01-16 23:01 UTC)