Create, manage and agree consulting agreements faster and more efficiently with this free consulting agreement template.
Consultants have different relationships to their clients than employees do to employers, which makes consulting agreements a key touchpoint to ensure clarity and define the terms of business relationships between consultants and their clients.
This article will delve into the details of a consulting agreement, exploring its purpose, elements, and how it can be effectively managed. We'll also give you a free consulting agreement template so you can get started straight away.
A consulting agreement is a legally binding contract that outlines the terms and conditions of a consulting engagement between a consultant or consulting firm and a client.
It serves as a foundation for the relationship, establishing expectations, responsibilities, and the scope of work. Consulting agreements vary depending on the nature of the consulting services provided, the industry, and the specific requirements of the engagement.
A consulting agreement works by defining the rights, obligations, and limitations of both the consultant and the client. It typically covers essential aspects such as the scope of work, project timeline, compensation, confidentiality, intellectual property rights, termination clauses, and dispute resolution mechanisms.
By clearly defining these elements, the consulting agreement ensures that both parties have a mutual understanding of their roles and responsibilities throughout the engagement.
The purpose of a consulting agreement is to protect the interests of both the consultant and the client. It establishes a solid framework for the engagement, mitigating potential conflicts and misunderstandings by providing clarity early on.
The agreement sets out the expectations for the project, helps manage risks, and safeguards sensitive information. Additionally, it provides a basis for legal recourse in case of disputes or breaches of contract, ensuring a more secure and transparent consulting relationship.
The responsibility for managing consulting agreements usually lies with both the consultant and the client.
Typically, the consultant's legal team or the consultant themselves drafts the agreement, ensuring that it accurately reflects the terms and conditions of the engagement.
The client's legal team or representatives then review the agreement, negotiating and making any necessary revisions to protect their interests. Collaboration and open communication between both parties are crucial in the effective management of a consulting agreement template.
What a consulting agreement looks like can vary considerably depending on the nature of the relationship, the scope of work, and whether any existing contracts are in place.
However, most consulting agreements will include the following elements in the template upon which they're based, alongside other things:
1. Scope of work: Clearly defines the nature and objectives of the consulting services to be provided.
2. Compensation: Specifies the fee structure, payment terms, and any additional expenses reimbursable by the client.
3. Project timeline: Outlines the duration of the arrangement, milestones, and deadlines.
4. Confidentiality: Establishes the obligations of both parties to maintain the confidentiality of sensitive information shared during the engagement.
5. Intellectual property rights: Addresses ownership and usage rights of intellectual property developed or utilized during the project.
6. Termination clauses: Explains when either party can terminate the agreement.
7. Dispute resolution: Specifies the mechanisms for resolving any disagreements or conflicts that could arise during the engagement.
The first stage is contract drafting, where consultants or their legal teams manually create the consulting agreement using existing contract templates or from scratch. This process can be time-consuming and error-prone, depending on the approach taken.
If commercial teams self-serve on consulting agreements, it's possible that they'll use the wrong version of the consulting agreement template, or omit important information during the editing process. But if legal teams are tasked with drafting every consulting agreement, it means that they quickly become buried in low-value admin work.
If multiple stakeholders are invited to edit and review the contract, this can cause problems with version control and make it messy and confusing to reach a draft that everyone likes.
Shortcut this process by grabbing our simple consulting agreement template example for free above.
Once the contract is drafted, it will be shared with the counterparty for review. At this stage, the consultant and the client engage in negotiations to agree on the terms and conditions of the consulting engagement.
Again, this can be an arduous process given how many tools are used. The client is emailed a version of the consulting agreement which they then move into Word for redlining. Once redlined, they send a copy of the contract back to the consultant for their revisions and approval. Again, this is usually done via email.
This back and forth between tools and versions continues until the parties are in agreement about the final terms.
When they have eventually agreed, the contract will need to be signed. Traditionally, this happened in-person using wet ink signatures. Today, it's more likely that the consultant and client will move the contract into a separate eSigning tool like DocuSign or Adobe Sign. The problem is, this adds yet another tool to their tech stack.
Eventually, both parties will need to store the signed copy of the consulting agreement for future reference. In a dated, traditional workflow, copies were kept in physical filing cabinets.
A more modern approach involves uploading them to shared drives instead where they're stored securely but not always easy to find.
It's also important for contracts to be tracked throughout their duration and beyond. To do this, businesses often manually input all of the important contract data into a contract management spreadsheet of some sort. It's then updated manually and checked regularly to keep on top of upcoming deadlines and contractual obligations.
This process is both flawed and time-consuming, though.
Businesses that manage their consulting agreements (and other contracts) in this way are often buried in low-value contract admin and slowed down by the friction created by moving back and forth between different tools.
Fortunately, you can eliminate routine admin work and agree contracts up to ten times faster by automating them in a contract management platform like Juro.
Juro users can generate consulting agreements in seconds using automated contract templates that have been pre-defined and approved by legal. All they have to do is answer a few questions or pull the data in to populate the contract via an integration with another business system.
But that's not all. Juro is an all-in-one contract management solution, meaning that teams can:
To find out more about the features we've just described and how Juro can streamline the process used to generate consulting agreements, hit the button below.
Juro is the #1-rated contract platform globally for speed of implementation.
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