Plain-English guides to the contracts you sign

Repairs, auto-renewal, uncapped rent, personal guaranties, and early-termination traps — what to watch for before you sign a lease.

The five clauses that decide whether a freelancer gets paid — scope, payment, IP, termination, and liability.

Comp and clawbacks, equity and vesting, IP assignment, non-competes, and arbitration — what to check before you accept a job offer.

Duration, geography, scope, and enforceability — how to read a non-compete before you sign (and why it varies so much by state).

Property, support, custody, and retirement — the terms in a divorce settlement that most often come back to bite.

The clauses that quietly decide what happens to a home, a business, or a career years from now — in plain English.

Definition scope, one-way vs mutual, perpetual terms, and the non-competes that get smuggled into a non-disclosure agreement.

Liability caps, indemnification, auto-renewal, IP, and payment — the clauses that decide who pays when a B2B deal goes wrong.

Deliverables, acceptance, change orders, milestone payments, and IP — the SOW terms that decide whether a project pays and ends cleanly.

Liquidation preference, anti-dilution, board control, valuation caps, and indemnification — and why a chatbot misses them.

Net-30 vs net-60, deposits, milestones, late fees, and expenses — the clause that decides when (and whether) a freelancer actually gets paid.

Who owns the work you were hired to create, and when it transfers — why it should hinge on final payment, and how work-for-hire changes it.

What you are really agreeing to cover when you sign an indemnity — and how a one-sided, uncapped version puts a freelancer on the hook for the client.

Whether your risk is capped, and at what — the clause that decides how much a single mistake can cost you on a small project.

How "done" is defined, revision limits, and change orders — the clause that separates a profitable project from unpaid, endless rework.

What you keep when a client pulls the plug mid-project — deposits, work-to-date, and the kill fee that makes cancellation survivable.

The clause that lets a client walk away for any reason — and how to make sure you are still paid for work done and notice given.

Restrictions on working for a client’s customers or competitors after the job ends — how far they reach, and what a reasonable limit looks like.

When a contract genuinely needs an attorney, when a careful self-review is enough, and how to tell the difference before you spend the money.

What a lawyer charges to review a contract, what drives the price, and how to decide what a given contract is worth spending on.

A practical, plain-English method for reading a contract on your own — what to check first, the red flags, and when to stop and call a lawyer.

When a client contract is worth a lawyer’s time for an independent contractor, and how to get the most protection for the least spend.

An honest look at what a general chatbot catches on a contract — and the specific ways it misses what matters.

Confidentiality, NDAs, personal data, and retention — what to think about before you paste a contract into any AI tool.

Training settings, how long ChatGPT keeps your file, who can see it, and how far to trust an AI review of it.