AH: How do you create terms & conditions for your apps/ecommerce/blogs etc?
AH: How do you create terms & conditions for your apps/ecommerce/blogs etc?
Do you use an online generator or hire a lawyer?
AH: How do you create terms & conditions for your apps/ecommerce/blogs etc?
Do you use an online generator or hire a lawyer?
I guess, it depends on where you are with your business and what kind of assets you are moving around. If it's just a blog with some analytics tool, I am sure you'll get it done by your own, even with the GDPR. To be honest, if you read a bit about the topic and over some sample terms, you can puzzle some together on your own. This is no legal advice, though 😅This approach will also have the advantage that you know exactly what and why you are offering which kind of terms/policies as opposed to just generating that stuff and forgetting about it immediately. Gives you some control and maybe leverage in future.
The more responsibility with your product or client data you have, the more I'd suggest you start thinking about a lawyer.
You might be able to do it if you go to a law school too :))
I think people can do it themselves, but how long will it take?
Man, I was in the exact same position and state of mind as you.
Then I had this law course at university, and the lawyer who was giving the course broke everything down into smaller chunks:
A privacy policy practically consists of one part that you have to include and one part that is optional/dependend on your situation.
Then in Europe there is the GDPR which has 5 to 6 paragraphs that are crucial for every statement and that you need to read.
From here you take some examples of your favorite professional websites that might be similar to your business and puzzle your policy together.
The terms can say practically anything, here an example from a solid company(read to the end):
https://www.scrapehero.com/legal/
Unless you are doing e-commerce or other very official stuff, then you have requirements too.
Overall I'd say it will take you a full day to organize this. Then I would let it sink in and
The beauty of this:
You will own your terms and not give control to generators or lawyers.
When everything gets very serious, you will know what the lawyers are talking about and why you need them at all.
Happy to report that I'm working on something to help with this use-case :)
My advice to all early-stage product people: look for terms from 3-5 products that provide the same/similar services, and adapt them to your needs. It does not make sense to pay a lawyer to do the terms from zero, especially if you are still tinkering with a beta/test version of your product and/or you are not generating revenue. Things may change while iterating, meaning terms would also change. Also, this approach helps you to "own" the terms, understand your product from the customer's perspective. If you want, you can ask then a lawyer to give it a review.
I went through my lawyer, but I also dropped a ton of money on legal and IP that I kinda wish I had back right now... Probably depends on your cash situation at this moment.
I just copy 'em. Not a generator even, pfft, I'm not paying $80 for the machine just to fill in the gaps for me when I can pretty much do that myself. It's not like the templates are some super-copyrighted stuff. And it's not like I'll be able to go to court if someone misuses or hacks my product — I'm fine with just having the clause that I can "deny service at any time at my sole discretion".
That said, if you feel that potential risks of not having a bespoke T&C for your product outweigh the costs of legal services, sure you should hire a lawyer.
I asked exactly the same thing a week ago.. the answers where here's a boilerplate... or you should not worry about it...I am stuck like you.
It's wrong not to worry till you have issues. It might work for a simple blog, but for an ecommerce business or for a business that sells something, I don't see how boilerplate can work.
And in the end Terms & conditions is wrong to copy like any other part of a website.
Depends; I sometimes grab a few boilerplate copies off the internet, so I can know what points I need to cover, and then proceed to either create a derivative of that, or simply craft my own.
It's wrong to copy it from other websites. More problems come if you sell something and need to be covered for all scenarios.
Nein mate, I'm totally and absolutely against copying from other websites. 101% against it.
When I said boilerplate, what it means is that there's plenty of "terms of service generators" on the internet that provide standard text.
Some of them will even ask you to enter your business detail, and generate a text specific to your business.
Search this phrase on Google: "terms of service generator"
Thumbs up!
Yes, I know they exist. That's why I asked what people use. Lawyers or Generators.
grab a generic one off docracy
But it has to match what your web app/website/ecommerce is doing. How much time do you loose by editing it?
If its your first product ever, that you are releasing, i would suggest getting a lawyer. It will give you insights about what you have to keep in mind, and how its done in general.
If you have similar products already released with TOS that are accepted by other platforms, you can create new ones based on that.
What do you usually do?
If its a product that has no similarities to others - lawyer. In general, i always asking lawyer to at least review it at some point, just to be save
How much do you pay a lawyer?