As a contract lawyer who has reviewed hundreds, if not thousands, of contracts drafted using a template, I have formed a love-and-hate relationship with contract templates.
Contract templates simplify our lives by allowing us to avoid reinventing the wheel. But the common assumption is all the wheels needed are in there. Unfortunately, many pick the template by title, trusting the terms that follow function to protect their bottom lines, and pay an astronautic price at the courthouse to learn that this is not the case.
Too many templates are not modifiable after review simply because they are the wrong templates for the business relationship. One example is the Independent Contractor Agreement. Many assume a rker becomes an independent contractor once you have a contract with the title. The law says it is different. The De apartment has issued regulations addressing analyzing whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor under the Fair Labor Standards Act. (FLSA) IRS has its regulations that define independent contractors. The genera rule is that an individual is an independent contractor if the payer has the right to control or direct only the result of the work and not what will be done and how it will be done.
Just like the doctor who googled my condition while warning me of googling my condition said, “Me googling is not the same as you googling,” a contract lawyer using a template is not the same as a business owner using a template because the former does not use them blind-folded. Please thi k twice before using a contract template.