Every document a business needs most often, included in every Buzz Legal subscription. Each one names the law it is built on and says when a template is the wrong tool.
A template earns its place when the document is standard, the stakes are ordinary and both sides broadly expect the same thing. A mutual NDA before a first conversation, a written statement for a new starter on the same terms as everybody else, a first chasing letter on an invoice nobody disputes — those are jobs where filling in a sound document is sensible, and paying somebody to draft one from nothing is not a good use of money.
Three things change the answer. The first is money: the clause that decides how much you can lose is the liability cap, and a template caps liability at a level chosen for nobody in particular. On a contract worth a meaningful share of your year, that number is worth setting deliberately.
The second is that the other side has sent their document rather than asked for yours. A template does not help you read somebody else’s contract, and that is where most of the risk in a small business sits — in terms drafted by the party with more to protect.
The third is that something has already gone wrong. Once there is a dispute, a threatened claim or solicitors on the other side, a template is the wrong tool: what matters then is what you can prove and what you do in the first fortnight. That is contentious work and it goes to RHF Solicitors.
A template is a starting point, not advice on your situation. It cannot know what you sell, who you sell it to, what you have already agreed or what has already gone wrong, and those are the things that decide whether a clause protects you. Read it against your own business before you issue it, and change what does not fit. If the other side has already threatened a claim, a template is the wrong tool entirely — that is a dispute, and it goes to RHF Solicitors.
A contract review is a fixed £249 +VAT for one document read in full and marked up. Drafting is quoted in writing before anything starts.
