Note: This transcript was auto generated then some poor soul sat and listened to it, and followed through correcting any mistakes they spotted. Please however expect human error and shout if you spot an issue. Email: lee [fancy curly symbol] trailblazer.fm.
Verbatim text
Lee:
Welcome to the WP Innovator Podcast, the podcast for web designers and design agencies, exploring the world of WordPress and online business. And now your host, Lee Jackson.
Lee:
Hi, and welcome to episode number 79 of the WP Innovator Podcast. This is your host,
Lee Jackson. We interrupt this broadcast with a quick giggle break And breathe.
Lee:
That’s not fair. No more giggles.
Lee:
Right.
Lee:
Right. Okay. Larissa kept making me laugh. So now I’m back. And on today’s show, we have
Leah Hamilton from Terms Feed. And guys, I was absolutely shocked when I realized that I’ve
actually been doing a few things wrong with my website, especially with regards to things like
terms and conditions, privacy, etc. And also my clients are doing things wrong. So this
has been a super educational podcast. I’ve been able to start reaching out to clients, giving
them some better advice, and also pointing them over to Terms Feed as well for their awesome
services online. So sit back, relax, enjoy the ride, and please keep your arms and legs inside
the vehicle at all times. Welcome and you’re joining a conversation today with me and Leah
Hamilton from Terms Feed. Leah, thanks so much for coming on the show. How are you doing today?
Leah:
Not a problem. I’m good.
Lee:
I did actually really offend Leah right from the get go because I started doing an Australian
accent and then realized she’s from New Zealand. So if you can feel the tension in the room,
that’s because she’s still not quite forgiven me. Have you forgiven me yet, Leah?
Leah:
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive you.
Lee:
I detect from the slight humor that you may have just forgiven me.
Leah:
I hope. I’m just gonna, I’m gonna go with that. I’m gonna go with that. So Leah, thanks for coming on the show. Now, we’ve got a Facebook group and that people like I go on about this Facebook group a lot. But the reason is, is because it is a group of designers. It’s a group of web agencies and freelancers as well who all build websites for other people. And one of the common conversations that people have are around contracts, are around privacy statements. If people are developing apps as well, it’s like, what licenses do you do for apps? So there’s, there’s all sorts of illegal stuff. And people will go and use maybe some free, freely available terms and conditions and all of that sort of stuff. And we’ll all help each other out. There’s WP Elevation as well that do a few terms that, you know, we’ll, we’ll review, etc. But we’ve never actually had a company on who specialize in creating terms. And for people listening, it may not necessarily sound like an exciting topic. But number one, Leah is freaking awesome and knows her stuff because we had a great chat just before we hit record, which is fantastic. So please stay tuned. There’s some great information in here. But also, I wanted to have you on the show as well, because I love the concept of your terms generator, which we’re not going to talk about yet. We’ll leave that till later in the show. So again, thank you for coming on the show. To shut me up. Could you please just say hello to everyone? Tell us a little bit about yourself, maybe your favorite color, your favorite drink, whatever, and how you got involved with terms feed.
Leah:
Yeah. So my name’s Leah, as you know, and I’ve been working at terms feed for a few years now. I’m working for terms feed as a writer, but my background is as a lawyer. So I mean,
everybody knows that lawyers drink a fair bit. So my favorite, my favorite drinks probably got us,
I gotta say wine there. But yeah, it’s, it’s a really cool company to work for. And it’s definitely
been great for me personally, being able to sort of intersect my, my love for writing with my legal
knowledge. And the, the way that terms feed works has just, I don’t know, it, it made me aware of a problem I didn’t really see when I was a lawyer was that, you know, legal agreements are expensive. And when you’re a lawyer, when you’re working as a lawyer, just think, oh yes, I’m getting paid tons, but you’re not thinking so much about people who have a business that might not be able to afford an agreement. And when I started working for terms feed, I realized that there were a lot of people out there who need this type of service. And that’s been really cool for me being able to contribute to something, something like that.
Lee:
So I’m hearing so far, a hundred percent job satisfaction going on right now.
Leah:
Yeah. I really like it.
Lee:
I can resonate with that as well. You know, we’re, we’re a growing company, but we still really do struggle when it comes to things like legal advice. And here in the UK, it is super expensive. I mean, just to get a letter written probably costs around 110 pounds. And that’s just a letter written to someone to maybe say, Hey, please, will you pay up because you’re late on your account? That’s probably some junior lawyer writing it who has one year experience, and they’re just writing a letter signed, you know, a solicitor, but actually drafting an agreement is something that is a lot more complex. Well, that’s what I was getting to the costs of trying to get my terms and conditions done. I did actually go out and get a few quotes and the costs were just astronomical for a small company like me. You know, I was potentially going to be spending an entire month’s worth of salaries just to get legal advice on terms and conditions. So I obviously had to find other sources of doing that. I mean, eventually, maybe I’ll have to invest. I don’t know. But, but right now that, you know, it’s just so cost prohibitive. So I love the idea that that’s what terms feed was, was built around. So, so is terms feed actually start, were they actually like a legal company that then pivoted and created a product with it that can you kind of give us a little bit of history there?
Leah:
No, so it was never, it was never a law firm or anything like that, that sort of switch to that kind of switch to doing what they do now. It’s a terms feed started as an agreement generator and they do use lawyers and legal staff to create the clauses that go into the agreement. So they do have input from lawyers, but it never started as a, started as a law firm or anything. It started as what it is basically.
Lee:
Yeah. So terms feed out of the box, providing freely used templates, as well as your, your online generator as well. So who would you describe for terms feed as kind of the, the ideal business that would, that would come along to use terms feed?
Leah:
So most of the people who use terms feed are, are smaller businesses or are just websites that don’t have any legal protection and they need something. So it’s definitely not something that a really big business would necessarily use. It’s a small and medium sized businesses that really, like, like you say, that really have trouble with that cost of paying a lawyer or, you know, paying a lawyer multiple times to get multiple agreements. It’s, it’s those kinds of people who use our service primarily or app developers as well. Yeah, it’s definitely, definitely the smaller size, size customers. So it might be something like an e-commerce store or just a static website that has some forms on it that are, that are collecting user data or something like that, where they think, oh, we actually need a privacy policy here. So yeah.
Lee:
And are you aware, and I don’t know if the laws are different in different countries or whether it’s a global law, but are there any particular laws or regulations that state if you are receiving people’s contact information in a form, you must publish some sort of legal documentation?
Leah:
Yes. It’s not, it’s basically, I don’t want to say every country, but most of the developed countries would have, do have legislation that says that you need to have a privacy policy. You need to have these types of legal documents if you’re collecting personal information from people using your app or visiting your website. And some, some countries are much stricter than others.
Lee:
I’m literally like, I can’t remember if we had one. Oh no, we’re good. I just, I just, I just quickly ran to our website. I was like, I can’t remember. Cause we, we just relaunched. I can’t remember if I’d remembered to put the privacy policy on. I was like, oh no. The other thing that is interesting to me anyway, is that it’s not just, it’s not just countries laws that require you to have these documents. There are some service agreements that you may have with providers like Google analytics, where the Google analytics terms of service says, if you use Google analytics, you have to have a privacy policy. And there’s little pitfalls like that, that people just aren’t aware of.
Lee:
Whoa. I’ve just thought as well that I imagine like your insurance company as well, especially if you have an e-commerce website, I am like, so for my business insurance, if I create like a working relationship with someone, I have to create a contract for them of some sort, even if it’s just sending the standard business terms and conditions that our business operates under. And that they have to reply to that in an email. Or even in writing to say, yes, we agree. Let’s go ahead and set up the first invoice. That therefore means that I’m covered for my liability insurance and everything through the insurance. If someone was to ever sue me, which, you know, so far never happened and hopefully will never happen. But still, I, you know, protect, you know, cover my ass as it were and protect the client and protect me might as well do it the way we should. So I assume therefore, and you probably can’t comment on that necessarily, but I’m assuming there must be some, something in people’s insurance, insurance policies as well. If they’re running e-commerce websites that they need to have something on there, like some sort of rules of engagement. So that there is some framework for if legal action is taken. Did I sign soup? Did I sound super legal just then? I feel, I feel like that was really good.
Lee:
Basically, like, like a lawyer. Wow. It’s, I think with insurance companies, it’s not usually as specific as saying you must have a privacy policy, but they do usually include terms saying, you know, that you need to comply with the law, you need to comply.
Leah:
And all those types of regulations and all those types of things will be, if you don’t comply with your local privacy laws and you get sued because of it, your insurance is not necessarily going to cover you for that because you basically, I mean, you broke, broke the law by not having a privacy policy in that case.
Leah:
Yeah. And the laws aren’t so explicit usually as saying that you have to have a privacy policy specifically. They often will just say, you need to disclose these particular things to your users. Yeah. And best way to do that is usually through a privacy policy. There are some laws though, that do say that you must have a policy. So it does vary from place to place. But yeah, it’s not just to, it’s not just like a, a thing that every website has for no reason.
Leah:
And it’s there for reason. If you’re listening and you’re thinking, I don’t think I’ve got a privacy policy on my website. Don’t worry. Terms feed have got you covered. Even if you need to temporarily put something up there like now, feel free, press pause, head on over to termsfeed.com. And they actually have free templated privacy policies that you can at least get started with before exploring what your options are for getting more specific with things like terms and conditions, privacy policies and all that sort of stuff. Now, Leah, with regards to privacy policies and that, I was looking at your website the other day and you talk about terms and conditions. You also talk about terms of service and that and I get really confused between what are terms and conditions, what is terms of service and where and kind of and what context I should be using them in. Can you shed any more light on that for me?
Leah:
Well, to be honest, the names of the documents, terms of use, terms and conditions, terms of service are often used interchangeably by people. And there are a lot of clauses in the agreements that are going to be the same. You might use a terms and conditions document if your website is just, you know, someone just comes and uses your website and looks at clothes or something that you’ve got there. But terms of service might be for an actual service that you’re providing. use might be for more of a static website it’s I mean they’re all relatively similar but obviously you can tell in the name that terms of service is obviously going to relate usually more to something that is service oriented whereas terms of use might just be like a blog like a static website where there’s not a whole lot going on except that maybe there are user accounts that people can comment or something like that so yeah the the actual naming of the document doesn’t matter so much as what’s actually inside the legal document so what it covers so make sure you’re covered for e-commerce make sure you’re covered for if you’re providing a service actually that’s a good question I mean when you say providing a service are we talking about now actually building a website for someone so that would be used as that sort of contract or do you mean like a term of service because you’re providing some sort of online service through a website both but you’d usually I mean if you are providing a whole package where you are building a website and you’re managing all the servers and you’re managing everything it wouldn’t usually be called a terms of service it might be you might have like a master service agreement and a service levels agreement you might have all sorts of different kinds of agreements but I’d say terms of service it would usually be just a web like a website service or an app service like dropbox like dropbox or something like that some sort of sass product
Lee:
So if you’ve got a sass product but obviously you’ve got service service levels and things like that that you’re trying to meet you’re going to have all sorts of other agreements in there too.
Leah:
Yeah. So the agreements terms feed focuses on are the ones between are not those super complex ones between big businesses where the service levels are really important for keeping keeping things online all the time you know if it’s an electricity company or something like that terms feeds ones are more for the smaller businesses where the service might be something like an e-commerce store
Lee:
I get you now and with regards to these uh like is there any restrictions to countries that can use these because or do you i mean maybe in the generator and maybe it’s something we talk about later on but i assume because there are different rules in different countries are you able to really create a terms and conditions that would cover the whole world or do you somehow have to say like these terms are governed under such and such a country so if you’ve got a problem you’ve got to go sewers over there or something is there a way of doing that
Leah:
Well yeah so your your question kind of has two parts with regard to actually creating the agreement you can put whatever clauses you want in it so you could put a clause that covers you for the law in singapore you could then include another clause that covers you for all the laws in the uk you could include a clause for covering you in the us and you can build a giant agreement that covers you for every jurisdiction in the world but i mean a lot of the privacy laws are so similar because they they feed off each other as the law develops one country goes ah that other country did a good job we’re going to copy them
Leah:
yeah so the reality is that there are a lot there’s a lot of overlap and you’re not going to realistically need some huge giant agreement but there will be small differences so for instance in the us the online privacy laws are very disjointed they’re more they’re coming from the states not from at a federal level
Leah:
yeah where it’s in the eu the law is so hardcore you have to have all this extra stuff that the us doesn’t even think about or require you to do so in terms of what you’re actually putting in your agreement it is going to be jurisdiction specific bar barring those core similarities that are just basic privacy ideas you know tell people if you’re collecting their information tell people if you’re sharing their information those kinds of things
Leah:
yeah and the terms feed generator when you generate an agreement you can choose which country you’re generating the agreement for so if there’s a very specific country thing it will say that in the generator
Leah:
yeah and with regard to your second question about which jurisdiction which country you sue people in there’s usually a clause in in every agreement at the bottom called jurisdiction or called another one called governance which says which law governs the agreement and then the jurisdiction is which jurisdiction you’re going to be sued in basically cool so that’s like a totally separate issue you know you could draft an agreement in the uk that you put the jurisdiction as career if you want to it would be totally pointless but but quite an interesting way to get around it wouldn’t it and if you want to sue me let’s just go to uh the scariest state in the world uh and we’ll go do that no one would say i don’t think you should i imagine that’s probably not something you should do yeah yeah don’t do that that’s really good advice i really appreciate that now you know i i panicked when you said privacy policy i was like oh my gosh have i put something on there but you know i am aware that i am a fallible human being i do make mistakes and i am interested in your experience over the last few years with terms feed what are some common mistakes that people make when they’re building a website with regards to either placement or just the use of different types of terms or legal documentation
Leah:
So i’d say the first mistake which is a pretty obvious one is just not having any at all there are people who think that just because their website uh they haven’t shared it with anyone that they think it’s not public even though it is actually online they just think that because they’re not advertising or advertising it or marketing it that they don’t need these policies and they’re also there’s also this view that if your service is in beta that maybe it doesn’t need these agreements because it’s not finished yet but anytime that anyone is interacting with your website or your app or your service you need these agreements and they’re not just to comply with the law i mean there’s no law that says you must have a terms and conditions document that document is there to protect you that document is there to protect your business and so people that think oh i don’t need this my business this is tiny i don’t need this my product is just in beta that’s wrong like you need to have these documents to protect your business anytime that anybody is interacting with your product or your website so yeah that’s the first mistake is just not having one the second mistake would probably be that a lot of people get one but they just copy somebody else’s
Leah:
yeah every business is different every product is different in its own way and unless your your website is super generic you know maybe it is just text on a page unless it’s that simple you’re going to have your own business needs your own business design where the clauses that you may need in your agreement might be different so for example a website that allows users to generate like user generated content is going to need a very different intellectual property clause than one that doesn’t have user generated content because you have all these licensing issues that come with people putting content on your website that they then need to license to you to use on your website and it just it gets complicated and so if you just copy someone else’s agreement it’s not necessarily right for you at all and you may think you’re protected but you’re not because the agreement applies to a completely different business so that’s the second big mistake that i hear about a lot and the third one is that people have an agreement that is specific to their business but you’ll you will have seen this a lot and it might even apply to your own website because it’s extremely common is that the legal agreements are displayed in tiny writing down the very bottom of the page nobody notices them nobody agrees to them and that can be an issue if you ever have a legal problem where you want to rely on your terms so one example is that a lot of terms have a clause in them saying basically you can’t sue us you need to do you need to go to arbitration instead which is a lot more chilled out basically than court yeah yeah and if you want to rely on that arbitration clause your your website users need to have agreed to that do you mean they have to like have ticked a box of some sort to say i agree to this is that yeah i mean they don’t have to have ticked a box but it’s a pretty good way to make that agreement clear so there has to be reasonably visible like at the moment i’ve got tiny text privacy at the bottom because every website i know does that i just thought it was the norm you just you just whack it in at the bottom with a little privacy link yeah it’s it’s one of those things where i think the norm is actually very different to best what best practice is and that’s a shame because if these legal issues do come up there are a lot of businesses that are vulnerable to wow to this so the two key things are that if you have a legal agreement on your website your users your website users need to have had reasonable notice of that agreement they need to have seen it and they need to have had an opportunity to read it if it’s in tiny writing down the bottom of the page the likelihood that they’ve had notice of it is relatively small because it’s not brought to their attention in any way they don’t need to have read it but they need to have had an opportunity to read it the second thing is that there needs to be agreement of some kind so ideally as you suggest you want some kind of tick box or a button saying i agree and the best way that you can implement this if you’re working as a designer and you’re creating this website is if there’s a web form if there’s a user account sign up anything where the user is you know clicking submit on anything just add a little check box that says by submitting this i agree to the terms of conditions and the privacy policy and hyperlink them in that text and then once the user checks the box they’ve checked the box that means that that they agree and the agreements have been brought to their attention because they’ve been hyperlinked right next to the check box that the user has checked so the the likelihood that they’ve actually seen those links is much higher than if they’re just down the very bottom of the page so i mean that’s one way that a lot of websites are starting to implement this way they’re starting to do things this way a lot more because some there are some legal cases where big big businesses have been pinged for for this type of thing where they have just displayed it in tiny writing and they have had a legal issue and they haven’t been able to rely on their own perfectly good terms because their users never saw them
Lee:
I’m really glad you said with regards to the submission of forms because i was just thinking now it’s going to be a real bummer if i have to like put a pop-up notice when somebody yeah accesses the website and get them to take something because it might like just scare people off or if i have to like put it in the header menu or something like that because it just doesn’t look as pretty or maybe make a tab but i guess the only time it really applies is when they start to interact with me as it were so especially in the privacy policy statement like so on my contact forms me just adding a quick checkbox with the you know check out our privacy statement and our terms and conditions you agree to it tick this um that’s just a very easy thing i can put on my contact box which therefore like you said highlights that we have it it’s entirely up to them whether they read it or not that’s not my problem but the idea is is that we’ve reasonably made them aware of it rather than just having a tiny privacy link at the very bottom of the page so i’m probably going to action that after this call
Leah:
yeah do do one exception to your pop-up concern is that a lot of websites now are you might see more commonly a little footer pop-up coming up with information about cookies
Leah:
yeah that is becoming a lot more common because you do need to tell users if you’re using you know if you’re using google adsense or google analytics you need to tell users that you’re using those services and google adsense and google analytics apply to your website at all times regardless of whether or not your user is submitting submitting a form because it’s still collecting it’s still accessing information from the user’s device including cookie options cookie management all that all that sort of thing and so websites are displaying this little footer pop-up saying do you agree to us putting cookies on your page that kind of thing if you’re using google analytics it’s really hard to know how to implement that kind of uh requirement you know do you also say we are using google analytics google analytics does x y and z you know it’s it’s one of those problems where it’s basically a big clash between a legal requirement or a legal need and what designers like and what website owners like and what they what they want you know nobody wants a giant pop-up everybody hates huge pop-ups but from a legal perspective that would be amazing you know
Lee:
what with a sound effect going like the old windows computers when the alert popped up and then it uses a powerpoint-esque like zoom out to the side when you click the button or something amazing like that
Leah:
oh we should do mr clippy do you remember that in word the little clip that used to pop up
Lee:
I do and i’m glad i don’t see him i’m glad he’s gone
Lee:
Rest in peace let’s just have a minute silence yeah it’s definitely one of those things where you just have to try and find that balance between good web design and uh meeting your legal obligations and there’s nothing that’s ever going to necessarily be perfect uh in either direction when there is that tension between the two so it’s just something for designers or developers to raise with their clients because at the end of the day it’s still the client who is going to be the one with either the crappy looking website or the lack of legal protection and so from a designer’s perspective all they can do is try to provide that value-added service by saying this is what best practice would be obviously this isn’t going to look great but let’s see if we can find a way to implement this that doesn’t really affect the user like a small checkbox on a web form or a submit button on a sign up form you know those sorts of things are good compromises where it’s good enough going to be good enough most of the time
Lee:
I’m so glad that we’ve had this conversation guys that’s the top three common mistakes that people make number one not having any i’ve done that one before number two copying and pasting someone else’s i didn’t do that because i’m always scared of being sued for like copying other people’s stuff but copying and pasting someone else’s i’ve actually seen one business who did that and actually left in the other company name as well which made me chuckle so i’d send them an email and say you might want to change that and then the final the final thing of the top three common mistakes and i’m sure there’s many more is not actually displaying it very well not giving the opportunity for people to actually consume those statements whatever they are and to actually even be able to agree to them so you may not be covered i love the idea i mean i hate the big massive pop-ups but you did make a very good point about the cookie notification and especially in the eu for a long time there was a big push on having some sort of cookie notification and one of the best ones kind of the least obtrusive ones i’m aware of are the ones that put like a black strip of some sort or a a strip with some information in it like please review our cookie call our cookie policy press here to close this message but it will appear until you press okay so every single page you’re on until you press okay it will then remove that message but i’m i’m guessing it doesn’t just have to be about cookies it could literally say we have a cookie policy and a privacy policy and terms and conditions of use of this website please review them press okay to close this message so that kind of or even uh press okay to confirm you’ve some something i don’t know i’ll put that text out but that would be a good non-intrusive way it’s not stealing the real estate of the screen necessarily you can make it on brand color wise so it can kind of match the design as long as it stands out a little bit more i think in my head that sounds quite a reasonable way to draw attention to it whilst allowing people to very quickly dismiss it if they want to which is totally fine because let’s face it whenever any ios um updates and it tells me to agree to the terms and conditions i’m pretty sure i don’t read all 979 clauses
Leah:
yeah and they don’t mind that i don’t they’re just happy that i accept
Lee:
yep you’re absolutely right and i do agree with you that that little butter is a perfect way to display not just the cookie policy but other agreements as long as there’s some kind of you know if you click to close this message you are agreeing with our policies basically exactly and a lot of websites do already do that it’s just going that step further and making sure it’s not just your cookie policy that’s being displayed there but your privacy policy as well if you are using something like google analytics that is applying from the moment the user actually comes to the website and if you’re not using google analytics then using a checkbox on web forms or using both in conjunction is a really good way to cover your cover your bases
Lee:
I thought you were going to say cover your behind cover your behind yeah i like it so on terms feed then obviously you guys have got the the freely available templated options that people can use but what i’m interested to find out more about is the terms generator i guess the virtual lawyer can you tell us some more about how your terms generator works
Leah:
yeah so i mean when you go on the website you can click to generate an agreement and then when you open the generator you’re first going to be telling the generator if you’re going to be using the the policy or the document on a website or an app and you’re going to be telling you tell the generator what your website name is what your url is if you’re a business if you’re an individual what country you’re in you input all that information so that the generator can fill out all those aspects of the agreement for you so obviously you do want your website name in there you do want your url in there and the country specific thing just really means that you can make sure that the laws that apply to that country are then being captured in your agreement so you go through the generator and fill in your website your website or your business details and you just fill it out as as personal like personalize it as much as you can so that the the agreement is as personalized for your business as possible
Leah:
so it doesn’t just capture things like obviously it’s not just going to personalize your website name or anything as simple as that it also does things like if you collect email addresses i’m talking about the privacy policy generator specifically here if your website collects email addresses if it collects people’s names if it collects telephone numbers or addresses or other things you can select in the generator that it collects all or some or none of those things you can tell it whether or not you use google analytics you can tell it whether or not you use google adsense you can tell it if the website uses remarketing you can tell it if your website is you know it’s got so many options basically i could go on through and that’s a way of sharing data isn’t it i suddenly forgot about that the pixel is a way of sharing data isn’t it with other companies
Leah:
yeah whoops sorry carry on so it’s one of those things where the generator is entirely customizable basically depending on exactly what information you collect exactly what you what services you use like google adsense like remarketing services it also includes things like if you’re sending email newsletters to users then it might be collecting particular types of information sorry the website might be collecting particular types of information need to be reflected in in the policy and so basically you go through the generator you select all these types of things and then at the end depending on how complex the agreement is if the agreement if the agreement is very simple the cost will be very low if the agreement is very complex the cost will be higher but the cost of the even the highest cost agreement is still going to be a lower cost than going to a lawyer because the generator is created the generator uses clauses that have all been created and vetted by a lawyer but because aspects of these clauses and aspects of the agreement are interchangeable they only need to draft the clauses so many times before they have enough for the generator and then those costs can be spread out basically over the number of agreements that are generated rather than you paying one lawyer tons of money to generate this agreement or not generate but draft this agreement for you and so it is customizable it’s not just a template it does match your business and the cost is going to reflect how simple or how complex your business is which is fair given that a very simple agreement doesn’t really need much work that goes into it but a complex agreement will be using up more of this time originally from the lawyer and saying that like I said before the cost is still overall very low so yeah it’s just a good option to either use for your website to completely cover you or if you want to pay for a lawyer eventually but you can’t pay for them now this is a really good option to just cover you in the meantime because it should cover everything it may just not be exactly what you want in terms of the language you know you can’t go through and change the the clauses to be written a different way to be more simple or more complex based on your personal preferences whereas a lawyer you can go to and say hey I like all the clauses you put in but I’d like them to be written in more plain English or it’s too plain English I think I want it to sound more complicated so that people don’t read it obviously you can’t do that with terms feed but yeah if you want to have a bit more of that kind of thing down the track with a lawyer terms feed agreements can still definitely cover you in the meantime and because they do have input from lawyers they do have legal staff who work at terms feed creating these agreements from the outset you know that they’re going to be sufficient to cover you even if that’s all you ever use because they are so customizable
Lee:
I like i like that i was looking at the terms and conditions ones and one of the first things that it asked me that i hadn’t even thought of was do users or even can users create an account because we deal with creating membership sites for a lot of people and we know that they’ll have just put a standard terms and conditions template in there and haven’t even considered the fact that actually yes people are creating an account there’s nothing covering them in there so that was a bit of an eye opener for me yesterday and i remember sending an email out to one of our clients saying hey guys you might want to check this out because i’m pretty sure the term because we don’t provide terms and conditions for our clients but obviously we recommend they do so i sent i sent terms feed over to them saying well you probably want to go through the terms and conditions generator over here because i think i’m not sure you’re covered for your membership site i think you’ve just done a standard kind of templated business terms and conditions so yeah that was that was very useful for us so remember guys it’s termsfeed.com if you just need to get started like today with something they do have the free templates that’s wonderfully generous of them obviously a bit of work filling it in but you know you’ve got the free templates to at least get started but then if like me you are a business that’s going to need some customization or you want to be able to recommend this to your clients who are going to need custom terms especially if they’re asking you for them and you’re like what then go ahead and check out the generator because just like every human on the planet pretty much every business is unique in its own special way isn’t that nice and even say if you need an agreement today and you want to use the template even if you go through and use the generator it generates the agreement for you as soon as you’re finished going through the generator so if you want something fast the generated agreement is still fast it’s just obviously not as fast as clicking download plate but it’s still pretty quick you know it’s going to take you maybe maybe 15 minutes 30 minutes to go through the generator at an absolute maximum if you’re considering every single question really carefully if your business is really simple it’s going to take you two minutes to go through the whole generator so it’s something where even if you need something fast you can still actually get a more complex agreement really fast as a lawyer is going to take potentially days or weeks to draft it all up and from my experience as a lawyer lawyers use templates anyway and so you know you’re you’re paying a premium cost for their expertise but an expert has already contributed to the agreement that terms feed provides so yeah
Lee:
I like it sold really sold to me so guys terms feed.com also be sure to check out the blog that’s terms feed.com forward slash blog they’ve got some really cool information in there and like i said if you scroll down i think it’s on is it on the home page no it’s on pretty much any page of the website if at any point you at least want to go check out those free templates go check out those or go play with the generator as well because i imagine you’re only going to take money right at the very end anyway aren’t you so someone could actually just go the whole way through just to see you know what to see kind of what bits they may have missed in their existing terms and conditions and then if they want to buy it that’s up to you guys i am not on an affiliate or anything like that but i just wanted to bring leah on because as i know you all agree leah you have been phenomenally brilliant in educating me and i’m sure everyone else is educated who’s listening to the show right now because you’ve said so much stuff that i just did not realize and i need to go and correct a few mistakes i’ve been making and i also need to have some good conversations with clients to help protect them because i feel like i’ve got a duty of care to my clients now to go and have conversations with those guys as well and say look i don’t think you’re doing this right and we need to make sure you’re covered so thank you so much for your time you are a legend
Leah:
No problem i hope it was helpful
Lee:
It was super helpful take care of yourself and thanks again
Leah:
You too all right bye
Lee:
And that wraps up this week’s episode in next week’s episode we’re going to be talking to a mate of mine we actually recently met at a coffee shop which was really cool and his name is pete everett and his journey is really quite fascinating he’s talking about his agency but also talking about some lessons that he’s learned so there’s some real valuable content in the interview and he’s given me some ideas that i’m going to be applying to some of the larger more complicated projects that we get in sometimes a real refreshing insight so that’s next week’s episode i hope you enjoyed this week’s if you didn’t then just send me a friendly email directly if you loved it i would really really appreciate an itunes review so head on over to itunes or apple podcast whatever it’s called now i don’t know what it’s called and it would be beautiful if you could give us a review on there also if you are not a member of the facebook group head on over to wp innovator.com forward slash group and that’s going to send you to the facebook group we are now rocking and rolling well over 700 members that’s web designers designers wordpress enthusiasts and cat lovers so it’s a great place to be a great place to have conversations so come and join the conversation over at the facebook group wp innovator.com forward slash group you listening that’s you right now you are a legend.
