We met with a new client this week. He is looking at buying a truck and a business to go with it. The business has him working as a contractor for a large international company. The contract was heavily stacked in favour of the company. He has lots of responsibilities. The company had few. The company gave no guarantees as to volumes of work, but required him to be available most of the year unless the company gave him permission to have a break.
We scanned in the contract, highlighted various bits and annotated the PDF with comments. We then met with the client. We took him through all our comments and then we warned him that the contract was terrible and the company could make life very difficult for him if it wanted. But he is going to sign anyway. I then had to sign a certificate advising that we had explained the nature and effect of the contract, as it will be hard for the client to sue the company if things don’t turn out as he expected. He’ll sue us instead for not explaining the contract to him properly! I think the paperwork will show that we did a proper job, so I am not concerned.