Fixed-fee legal work for business owners
Or on nothing written down at all. Your terms are the one document you control completely, and the only one that decides who carries the loss when something goes wrong. A set written for how you actually sell is a fixed £695 +VAT.
Terms and conditions are the least glamorous document a business owns and the one that pays for itself most reliably. They are also the one most often borrowed from somebody else’s website, which is how a services business ends up trading on terms written for a shop, complete with a returns policy for goods it does not sell.
The problem with borrowed terms is not that they are unprofessional. It is that they were written to protect a different business from a different risk, and the first time you need them is the first time anybody reads them properly.
When you get paid, and what happens if you do not. Payment terms, what triggers the obligation to pay, and whether you charge interest on late payment. Terms that say nothing about late payment do not stop you claiming statutory interest, but terms that say the wrong thing can replace that right with something worse. This is the single most common self-inflicted wound in a small business.
What you are on the hook for. A liability cap is one paragraph, and the difference between a bad month and a business-ending one. The trap is drafting it so aggressively that it is unenforceable — a limitation clause a court will not uphold is the same as having none, except that you thought you were covered.
Who owns what you make. If you produce anything — designs, code, copy, reports — your terms decide whether the client owns it, licenses it, or owns it only once they have paid. Silence usually favours whoever has the better lawyer afterwards.
What happens when somebody changes their mind. Cancellation, what is payable for work already done, and how either side ends the relationship. If you sell to consumers rather than businesses, cancellation rights are set by law and your terms cannot take them away, only explain them.
The distinction matters more than anything else on this page, because it changes which rules apply. Business-to-business terms are largely a matter of what the two sides agree, subject to limits on excluding liability. Consumer terms bring in statutory cancellation rights, the unfair terms regime, and information you must give before the sale rather than after.
A set of terms that ignores that distinction is either unenforceable against consumers or needlessly restrictive with business customers. If you sell both ways — and plenty of businesses do without quite realising it — say so at the outset and the work covers both.
A fixed £695 +VAT for one set of terms for a business selling one way. It is a starting price because a consultancy with a single service and an e-commerce business shipping physical goods to consumers in three countries are both asking for “terms and conditions”.
What makes it non-standard: more than one set of terms, because you sell to businesses and consumers or run two distinct product lines; subscription or SaaS billing, which brings renewal and cancellation mechanics of its own; selling outside the UK; and anything that has to sit alongside a client’s own contract rather than replace it. You get a figure first.
Terms and conditions govern the sale. Website terms of use and a privacy notice govern the site itself, and if you take any personal data you need both. The guide to website terms and privacy sets out which you need and why they are not interchangeable.
Send them. Most businesses have something, even if it is a page inherited from a previous owner or a paragraph at the bottom of an invoice. Starting from what you actually use is usually faster and always more accurate than starting from a template, because your existing terms tell us how you really sell rather than how you would describe it.
If what you have is genuinely fine, we will say so. That happens more often than you would expect, and it is a cheaper answer than the alternative.
Drafting and explaining terms of business is not a reserved legal activity. Buzz Legal Ltd is not a firm of solicitors and is not regulated by the SRA, so our own work does not carry the SRA compensation fund or the Legal Ombudsman. If your terms are already being argued about with a customer, that is a dispute rather than a drafting job, and it goes to RHF Solicitors (SRA no. 324115) where it needs to. If the argument is about an unpaid invoice, Business Debt Recovery — a trading style of Buzz Legal — prices that work separately.
A fixed £695 +VAT for one set of terms covering the way you currently sell, agreed in writing before anything starts. That includes payment terms, liability and limitation clauses drafted to be enforceable, ownership of any intellectual property you produce, and cancellation. It is a starting price rather than a flat one: needing separate terms for business and consumer customers, subscription or SaaS billing mechanics, or selling outside the UK all make it a bigger job, and you get a revised figure before work begins rather than a larger invoice afterwards.
You can, and a great many businesses have. The risk is not that somebody notices; it is that the terms were written to protect a different business from a different risk, and you find that out at the worst possible moment. Borrowed terms routinely include a returns policy for goods a services business does not sell, a liability cap unrelated to what the business actually earns, and payment terms nobody follows. There is also the awkward point that the wording is somebody's copyright. The first time your terms matter is the first time anyone reads them properly.
Terms and conditions govern the sale — what you are supplying, when you get paid, who carries the risk, what happens if either side pulls out. Terms of use govern your website: acceptable use, disclaimers on the content, and the limits of what visitors can do with it. They are different documents doing different jobs, and a business that sells online generally needs both, plus a privacy notice if it collects any personal data at all, which almost every site does through its contact form.
Not necessarily, but they do have to be brought to the customer's attention before the contract is made rather than afterwards. Terms printed on the back of an invoice sent after the work is done are usually too late, which is one of the more common and expensive mistakes. What counts as adequate notice depends on how you sell — a tick-box at checkout, a reference in a quotation the customer accepted, or a signed order form all work in different circumstances. Part of the job is telling you how to issue them, not just what they should say.
If you sell both ways, yes, and it matters more than most other decisions about your paperwork. Consumer sales bring statutory cancellation rights, the unfair terms regime and pre-contract information duties that you cannot contract out of. Business sales are largely what the two sides agree, subject to limits on excluding liability. One set of terms trying to cover both is either unenforceable against your consumer customers or needlessly restrictive with your business ones. Tell us at the outset and the work covers both properly.
That is extremely common, and it is a contract review rather than a drafting job. Whoever's terms end up governing the deal decides who carries the loss when something goes wrong, so it is worth knowing what you are agreeing to before you sign. A contract review is a fixed £249 +VAT and covers exactly that: what their document does to you, and which clauses are worth pushing back on. In practice the answer is often that two or three clauses matter and the rest are fine.
Buzz Legal handles contracts, terms of trade, employment paperwork and dispute preparation. Court work, and the other activities reserved by law, are carried out by RHF Solicitors, authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (no. 324115) — and you are told which yours is before you spend anything. How this works, in full. This site is information rather than advice on your situation.
Your current terms, or a line on how you sell if you have none. You get back whether they do the job, what is missing, and one fixed price to put it right. See the privacy policy for how we use your details.
Fixed £695 +VAT for one set of business terms.