Did you know that you get access to a dashboard of online legal templates included with your legal expenses insurance? Instead of paying a lot of money for a lawyer to draft a letter for you, these professionally written documents are available and tailored to you.
Legal documents for UK business
The majority of our customers are freelance web designers, developers, digital marketers, graphic designers, copywriters and photographers. We also have a number of small businesses like digital agencies. Here are the most popular templates our customers use.
Debt collection letters for unpaid invoices
It’s estimated that 1 in 3 payments are late, so it’s no surprise that the debt recovery letters are the most popular.
Debt collection letters for unpaid invoices
There’s a method to collecting outstanding debts. This involves sending 3 letters demanding payment, which calculate the total outstanding debt including any interest due on the overdue amounts. The legal documents will walk you through when to use these letters, rights to claim interest, reasonable recovery costs and next steps so you’ll have guidance from start to finish.
After sending the first letter and receiving no reaction, you’d then send the second and third letters. The third letter is a final ‘letter of claim’ (also known as a ‘letter before action’). This is where court action would be threatened if you don’t get a response and includes the information sheet, reply form and financial statement form that you need to give to the debtor before you can go to court.
The dashboard includes all three debt collection letters.
Letter offering payment and settling claims
If a business claims you owe them money in relation to the services you’ve provided and you dispute it, this letter can settle the matter by compromising on a figure. This should prevent the matter going to court.
If your offer is reasonable but rejected by your client, any ruling about who pays the legal costs have a better chance of going in your favour if it goes to court and you’ve sent this letter.
Copyright and trademark agreements
Trade mark license agreement
A trade mark is any sign represented graphically and which can distinguish one trader from another. You can grant someone a license to use your trademark exclusively or non-exclusively.
This agreement licenses another to use a trade mark within a specific area.
Protecting your ideas
Non-disclosure agreement
If you’re wanting to reveal information to another party which is confidential you might want to have them sign an NDA. There is both a non-disclosure agreement where confidential information can be evaluated, or a mutual non-disclosure agreement where both parties need to protect their confidentiality.
Terms and conditions
A lot of our customers are concerned with staying on the right side of GDPR.
Privacy and cookie notice for a website
Under UK data protection law you need to tell people about the information you hold if you’re collecting and storing information from people who visit your website.
This privacy notice will highlight how you’ll use their data and for what purpose, their privacy rights and how the law protects them.
Terms of use for a website
Your website terms and conditions should cover issues such as access, intellectual property and liability, with optional clauses regarding registration and posting reviews. It doesn’t cover the sale of any goods or services via the website (i.e. through taking payments online), but there is a ‘Terms and conditions for selling consumer goods or services on a website’ document for that.
This, coupled with the privacy notice, helps you comply with statutory regulations.
Assigning and terminating a contract
Buyer’s notice to end a contract
Use this document to notify a seller you’re terminating a contract if they’ve breached any terms which are fundamental to the contract and you’re seeking compensation for your losses. This would have to be a serious breach which affects the nature and performance of the contract itself.
Employment contracts
Consultancy agreement
A lot of our customers engage the services of other freelancers and consultants so you’ll need to draw up the terms of the consultancy including payment, obligations and intellectual property. Whilst it isn’t a contract of employment, failure of either party to honour the terms of the agreement could lead to claims of breach of contract or negligence.
Agreements like this are more important than ever due to IR35. Where the consultant is an individual, this document provides that they will be an independent contractor and not an employee, and responsible for their own tax and National Insurance. An employment tribunal or court will look at the terms of this document.
If any of this sounds useful to your business, you can add legal expenses insurance to your policy when getting a quote. Existing customers can also add legal expenses to their current policy by getting in touch to request a quote.
