Services and consulting
Services agreement
In the libraryThe door has this paper. Type its name at the composer. It offers to start from it.
The paper behind ongoing work for a client: what you will do, what it costs, when you invoice, who owns what you make, and how either side ends it. It is the one most freelancers, studios and consultants reach for, and it is the same document whether the person asking called it a contractor agreement, a consulting agreement or a retainer. It usually sets the standing terms once, and lets each new piece of work arrive as its own short statement of work underneath.
- Printed on the page as
- Master Services Agreement
- Where it can live
- Any of the 184 governing laws
Who uses one
- Freelancers, studios and agencies who work with the same client across more than one project.
- Consultants selling time and judgement rather than a finished object.
- Companies buying work from an outside supplier who want one set of terms for everything that follows.
What you are deciding
- What the work is, and how a new piece of it is agreed
- What it costs, and when you invoice
- What happens when an invoice is late
- Who owns the result, and what the supplier keeps
- What each side is promising about the work
- Where liability stops
- How either side ends it, and what is paid on the way out
- Which legal system the paper names
Blanks you leave stay blank and wait in the room. Nothing is filled in from a guess.
The sections a draft usually has
- 1The parties
- 2The services, and how work is ordered
- 3Fees, expenses and invoicing
- 4Ownership of the work
- 5Confidentiality
- 6Warranties
- 7Limits on liability
- 8Term and termination
- 9Governing law
A general outline, not a required one. What turns up in a draft follows what you described. A contract is written in the order a contract is read.
What people call it
Type any of these at the door. It offers this paper. The matching happens in your own browser, on a wordlist you could read. No model runs before you sign in.
- msa
- master services agreement
- master service agreement
- services agreement
- service agreement
- master agreement
- contractor agreement
- contracting agreement
- freelance agreement
- freelancer agreement
- consulting agreement
- consultancy agreement
- retainer agreement
- statement of work
- work order
- sow
Questions people ask
- What is the difference between a services agreement and a statement of work?
- The services agreement holds the standing terms — payment, ownership, liability, how it ends. The statement of work holds the particular job: what is being made, by when, for how much. One services agreement usually carries many statements of work.
- Is a contractor agreement the same thing?
- In substance, usually yes: a contractor agreement is a services agreement between a business and an individual supplier. Whether the arrangement counts as self-employment is a separate question decided by local law, not by the title on the paper.
- Who owns the work by default?
- It depends on the legal system and on what the paper says, which is why ownership is written down rather than assumed. Papers of this kind commonly assign the delivered work to the client while the supplier keeps its own pre-existing tools and methods.
General answers about the document. Not advice about your situation. Not written about any one country.
Where it lives
A contract names the legal system it is governed by. That is a separate decision from which paper it is. You pick it at the door, from any of the 184 units in Governing law, including England and Wales, Delaware, California and New York.
Say what you agreed in one sentence. When what you describe is services agreement, the door offers this paper. One press takes it. One press refuses it.
Start it at the door →Related kinds