Sign New Jersey Terms of Use Agreement Later

Document type sign terms of use agreement new jersey online

hello everyone welcome and thank you for being here my name's alyssa and on behalf of staples we're extremely excited to partner with rocket lawyer for today's webinar on signing contracts a topic that can be tricky for most of us on a good day and it's been proven to be even more challenging during the pandemic like anything else our guest speaker rocket lawyer on qual attorney michael fucci is an expert in this area and will help break things down for us today we do have time for q a set aside at the end so start thinking about any contract or legal questions you may have now to ask a question you can scan the qr code you see on your screen now or you can follow the link on the eventbrite page you can submit questions throughout the broadcast and we'll do our best to get to as many as we can before our time is up now before we continue i do want to remind everyone that this presentation contains legal information and not specific advice so with that i'll turn it over to charlie moore founder and ceo of rocket lawyer charlie it is so great to have you back with us today over to you hey alyssa it's it's uh awesome to be back with uh with you thank you for all of your uh great work uh getting all of this to happen for us and for uh everyone who's able to attend today we are are always excited to work with staples a terrific resource for every uh small business owner out there i i hope everyone is staying healthy and safe and is uh hopefully getting back to work and uh your businesses are reopening if they were uh uh if they were closed uh and and that you're able to uh to really get back to business um in this in these uh uncertain times so uh i'm very excited to uh be here and uh to share the expertise of michael fucci uh sorry we don't have dr fauci with us today but michael is uh an expert in uh everything to do with contracts uh and all of the legal situations that uh entrepreneurs and small business owners face i'm also really thrilled to be able to talk about something that i've spent my whole career uh working on which is uh natively digital agreements uh and digital signatures especially um which believe it or not just had their 20th anniversary uh of the digital signature act signed by president clinton back in 2000 uh and uh we've never needed uh completely natively digital uh ways to get uh contracts signed and to do business more than we need them uh now in uh in 2020. so with that michael who's a graduate of uh the university of georgia school of law um and uh and and one of our very best uh rocket lawyer on-call attorneys uh is going to take it from here and uh talk about uh how do we get contracts done uh in uh in the time of uh covet 19. thank you so much charlie uh welcome everybody as charlie mentioned i am an on-call attorney here at rocket lawyer and what that means is i've probably connected with many of you online over the q and a platform in the past but in addition to the q a the on-call attorney services are a really great and convenient way for you to be able to connect with an on-call attorney in your area to ask them questions via phone or via email about some of the legal concerns that you might have coming up in your business so if you haven't tried out that aspect of the on-call services i definitely would encourage you to give it a shot now in addition to being an attorney uh i'm also a small business owner so in light of covid i can commiserate with you i can sympathize with you i can empathize with you i can celebrate with you and of course most importantly i can relate to you so uh i can relate to what we've been dealing with over the past seven months and how we're adjusting our businesses to to deal with covid and the resulting shutdown it's it's crazy to think that it's been seven months since this is happening or since this has happened rather but i'm hoping today that i'll be able to share with you uh my knowledge not only as a legal professional but also as a small business owner so that we can really create a strategic new way of tackling business in light and contracts specifically in light of this new normal now i love contracts i'm sort of a contract geek it's sort of like uh everybody has one of the person in their office that loves excel spreadsheets well that's me for contracts there's something about the organization of it the consistency of it the stability of it that i just love and so to be able my hope today is to be able to share that passion with you um so that when you're faced with a contract uh whether you're negotiating drafting it or or signing it that you'll be able to to do so confidently knowing that uh your interests are best served so i just want to rewind a little bit from uh from where we are today back seven months ago when this all started it seems crazy to think that life has changed it's completely different than what it was and the same is true in some sense for contracts now i don't want to bore you with some boring contract law type professorial thing but i think it's important to uh touch on really the basics of contract law which you know there are three elements of a contract offer acceptance and consideration and a lot of times the questions i'll get is what is this consideration well it's essentially a contract is a bargain for exchange so it's giving something to receive something and so the giving of something would be consideration and the receiving of something would be consideration and that worked great before covid uh you would deal with some of the foreseeable issues like for example in a lease agreement uh you might say that rent is due on the first of the month and if it's not paid by the fifth then there's a hundred dollar late fee so you deal with some of those foreseeable issues that might come up well that's no problem seven months ago but kovid and the resulting shutdown really hit small businesses hard because we started dealing with issues that we've never dealt with the early challenges were really created by the pandemic and i i we experienced a lot of new firsts and i summon up in one word and that is uncertainty um really we found ourselves i like to describe it in unchartered waters and the currents were always changing because every day it seemed like there was something new that would happen that would change the way that we are doing business and so we we had to be nimble on our feet we had to adjust to it and deal with these unforeseeable issues not only were we dealing with a virus that was a health concern we were also dealing with the ramifications of the virus that then became a business concern and just like the stock market doesn't like uncertainty small businesses do not like uncertainty and so my hope today is is that we'll be able to tackle a few key points on contract making to help reduce some of that uncertainty now one of the key things that we were dealing with as a new first was governments shutting down federal state and local governments were all shutting down and imposing new restrictions and even uh even today as things are starting to open up we're still seeing businesses have to change and adjust i've got a real good friend that has a dance studio in los angeles and they're still unable to open up their business and so they're dealing with a lot of issues that are resulting from contracts and leases and and things like that that are creating new firsts for them so um in dealing with contracts and amending of contracts we want to tackle some of those issues to to make sure that we're best prepared to handle the uncertainty uh an interesting thing also about the pandemic is that even with disputes within contracts many of the courts were closed so many courts they weren't hearing contract disputes they weren't hearing landlord-tenant disputes and so it really made it challenging to solve some of those disagreements that the parties would have within the contract now i'm going to we're going to talk about ways to avoid that and sort of alleviate some of that burden in the future and then remote work everybody knows we're remote work now i'm working here for my home everybody's working from their home so they're definitely different and additional concerns really to think about as we start implementing work from home solutions and i'd encourage you to look back at one of the previous staples rocket lawyer series that a really fine attorney on-call attorney derek smith did on employment law and that's he was talking about covid for small businesses and really a lot of the employment law issues that were dealt with at the time so if you haven't seen that i encourage you to go check that out so how do we grapple with where we are today well we've got really a couple of new challenges and that first ones are with our current contracts you know how do we deal with this fallout that stemming from one of the parties not being able to perform or not being able to fully perform their end of the deal and one of the key things here to keep in mind is communication you want to make sure that you're always in communication with the other party if you feel like we might not be able to meet the deadline it's always good to start as early as possible to have that conversation because unfortunately sticking your head in the sand does not make problems go away so if you're able to tackle those early on it really helps to make things a little bit easier in hopes of secondarily finding some sort of compromise between the two parties and uh you know one of the the the sayings that you hear i'm here in atlanta and i see uh i see the signs on on people's front lawns that say we're all in this together everything will be okay and that's it's a nice sentiment but this is really where we put it into practice compromise is key when parties are unable to fulfill their end of the bargain so if you start those conversations early find some sort of compromise then you're able to put that into a new amendment to the contract and and that's what we'll talk about how to really uh commemorate what the agreement is and then in addition to dealing with those current contracts that we're working on we've got the new challenges from new contracts business goes on life goes on so inevitably we're going to be signing some new contracts so today we're going to talk about how do we draft these contracts that will protect us from some of these unforeseen issues that we've never dealt with before how do we negotiate the contracts to protect our businesses from liability do liability waivers work um how do we sign these documents how do we get them notarized illegally in light of the safety concerns and uh social distancing requirements and and as charlie was referencing earlier with the the signing of the electronic signature act back in 2000 this is really an exciting new time for us and and really a an area of law that's expanding and becoming really commonplace so let's dive into drafting smartly some new contracts and and this deals with lease amendments to your current contracts but also dealing with new contracts as you're going forward and the first and foremost we just want to create some order from the chaos and find some certainty in these uncertain times and the way you do that first and foremost is to learn from your past experiences there's nothing like seeing what we didn't hit or what we didn't handle in our previous contract to be able to readjust and then include them in our current contracts now we want to make sure that these contracts are in writing and this creates certainty and this is where it's really great to utilize some of the the resources that rocket lawyer has within the rocket lawyer library they they have all sorts of documents from service contracts to landlord tenant agreements and within each of those areas of law you also have those splintering out into more specific agreements for example you'll have a service agreement but you'll have several different types of service agreements that you can choose from and really tailor it to to your needs now the key here is one tip i would tell you is with contract amendments you really want to make sure that you get those amendments into writing just because you've come up with a compromise and come up with an agreement a verbal agreement is okay and you can prove it in court but it's always better to get it in writing whether you start with just putting it in an email that's a good way to go to start with but then even more formally including it in a contract amendment and that's one of those documents that you can find on the rocket lawyer website next uh we want to include a force major clause this is one of those fancy legal terms that essentially is a french term that literally translates into superior strength it's one of those uh clauses that you're probably familiar with that that would say tornadoes flooding earthquakes strikes union disputes and other acts of god it's those types of things that are included within a force major clause well in order to include this in your contract that will allow it to trigger when something like covid hits you really need to include language like pandemic or epidemic or government restrictions and this was one of the issues that many of the the folks that i've been talking with have faced they do have a forced major clause in their contract but unfortunately it doesn't hit those key points and one of the very important things about a forced major clause is to make it sure that it is very specific and it specifically references the event you want to protect against so in in the case of covid again pandemic epidemic viral outbreak government restrictions government shutdown different things like that would be key to include within your contracts and within your contract amendments secondly for a forced major clause to be valid you want to make sure that you're signing it before the triggering event unfortunately now with contract amendments including a pandemic in there will not protect you against a covid19 type scenario so you want to make sure that it is before the triggering event that you agree as to this new language and then also in order for it to be valid you need to make sure that there's an actual inability to perform uh inconvenience or the fact that it costs more unfortunately doesn't help in the case of a forced major clause so if for example you are shipping goods and your shipper uh is is no longer available and it's going to cost you twice as much to ship from uh from using another shipper unfortunately that may not trigger the force major clause because you're still able to fulfill your end of the bargain so it really does have to be an impossibility or an inability to perform another really important thing that you can include within your new contracts are an arbitration clause and remember i chatted about earlier about the court's closing this is one of those ways to protect against that because not only can arbitration clauses save you some time and money as opposed to the costs associated with litigation and litigating those disputes that you have with contracts it will allow you to handle those disputes even when the courts are closed many many folks had opportunities to work with arbitrators virtually in order to deal with some of the contract disputes so i highly encourage you to consider putting in an arbitration clause in your current contracts or in your contract amendments going forward and another really neat thing about an arbitration clause is that it's private litigation is public so if you have uh if you go to court and and you're settling your agreement in court a lot of that that will not be a private uh a private thing so in order to keep things private whether it's you know especially like within employee disputes its arbitration clause gives you a really good opportunity to keep it private and then last including some additional language that might be applicable to your situation for example with employment contracts uh work from home agreements or work from home language there's actually a great work from home agreement in the rocket lawyer library so if your company is dealing with that now then i encourage you to go check that out and you can create a new work from home policy for your employees also dealing with emp oyment contracts um security there's the security when people start working from home you have additional security concerns for your business whether it's what's on their computer or or security measures with the security of their computer itself so it's good to think about things like non-disclosure agreements or additional work from home security measures in addition to employment you might be working with a goods or services contract so definitely some contingency clauses would uh be good to include in there or some termination clauses and then finally some additional language you could include for property uh related things are are security deposits and ensuring that you are taking a security positive deposit first in the first place but then making sure that it's sufficient to cover you as a landlord in case the tenant is unable to pay and then some new products like rent guarantee insurance or there's also business interruption insurance and and asking your tenants to have that type of coverage or some additional language that you could include within your contracts now once you sort of have the basis of drafting the contract it's the next step is negotiating and the key here is is to first and i hate to to say sometimes the obvious but it's important that you read the contracts i can't tell you how many people just skip over the language and it's easy to do i mean it's easy to gloss over language especially if there are some terms in there that you don't understand or if you're tight on time i know uh for me if if i go to a rental car counter you're signing you're initially at each little thing they're saying well this is telling you this this is you're waving this this is where and that's fine you're just initialing away but what they tell you is not enforceable it's actually what's written in the contract so that's why it's important to read all the the entire contract in its entirety and if you have questions about any of the language in the contract if there's specific terms or things that you don't understand don't hesitate to ask and that's really this is a great opportunity to take advantage of the rocket lawyer on-call services just connect with an attorney in your area you can forward over the contract and get some of those questions answered also in negotiating again communication is key you want to be clear about your demands there's a little bit of a balance here because you don't want to reveal all your cards but you do want to be clear about what you want so as you come up with some ideas to as to what you want to include within the agreement keep in mind that those verbal discussions or those outside agreements that you might have really need to be explicitly incorporated into the contract themselves so if for example you you were negotiating something over the phone yes that's what we're going to agree to you sign the contract it doesn't have that language in there that conversation will not be included in the contract so you really want to make sure that you commemorate all those verbal discussions any outside agreements you can incorporate by reference in the actual document itself you also as you're scanning through the language you want to look for those unfavorable or ambiguous terms and in doing so i always say the tip i i like to give people is read the contract as if you're not a party to the contract read it as if you know nothing about the situation so as you're reading through it and you're looking at the terms if it may not make sense or if there might be a disagreement as to how something would interpret be interpreted it's good to flag that so that you can provide further clarification one thing that comes up quite often is in uh commission agreements where a commission is based off sales well that sounds great and the person drafting the contract knows what they mean by sales but is it gross sales is it net sales if it's net sales how do you determine what's taken into account to determine net sales so that you can actually figure out what commission is based on so again read those contracts as if you're not a party to the contract if it could be interpreted in any other way it's important to really hone in on those terms and be very clear and precise you want to hope for the best of course but you want to prepare for the worst and and by going through it that way it really helps you to do that unfortunately and i've been guilty of this in the past you're so passionate about a deal that that you really want it to happen and you know it's not a good deal but sometimes you just have to walk away a bad deal is uh much worse than no deal at all and so sometimes even just a little additional time will allow the parties to come closer to an agreement that is more fair that really hits the important things to you as you're contracting and then ultimately in negotiation some people just really don't like to deal with negotiation because it can be a back and forth between parties so if you're one of those people or if you just want additional guidance don't hesitate to reach out to an on-call attorney start that conversation with the on-call and really they'll be able to talk with you uh on the basic terms of of the things to consider and then if you need to dive deeper if you need to secure that attorney services to actually negotiate for you that is definitely an option but again in this negotiating we want to create certainty out of uncertainty so it's really important communication making sure the terms are favorable making sure that they're very precise and that you know exactly what you're signing and speaking of signing you really as charlie had mentioned and and i don't know charlie if you want to talk now or at a later time a little bit more about the new rocket sign feature that we have at rocket lawyer it's it's fantastic um it allows for the digital signing of agreements so as charlie had mentioned it's been 20 years since president clinton signed into law the electronic signature act and what that allows you to do is to virtually sign an agreement electronically and it's just as valid as a wet signature actually signing with a pen which is which is really fantastic and the neat thing about rocket sign and what sets rocket sign apart from other digital signature platforms is that it gives you access to an attorney right there um uh i love everything that you've taken everybody through michael it's been terrific to get that information and you know we created um rocket science to be uh different you know today uh 20 years after the the digital uh signature act um we're signing with our finger on our phones um all kinds of stuff from uh uh cab rides uh the mundane you know from cab rides back when we were all taking cabs uh to really important things like mortgages and some of the biggest decisions that we make um but but have you ever signed something or sent something out to sign where uh you really weren't sure you know michael just went through all of the different uh provisions in agreements and how to look at everything and read everything so i know all of us have probably uh sent something out to sign or signed something that we weren't uh completely sure of uh we created rocket science so that you can send and sign confidently uh knowing that uh just one click away uh there's an attorney uh there to help you understand what you're signing so that you can do it with confidence and and so we're we couldn't be more uh excited about uh being able to offer that service to everyone that's great charlie and really this is a prime time for that being at a time of social distancing that you're able to sign as charlie said with your finger and and it's just as legally valid as if you were to uh in person with a pen um kind of moving on with that along with digital signatures sometimes you need notarization services and again how do you do that at a time of social distancing when you're not able to get out or you're not able to go to a notary well with this it's it's not quite to where the digital signatures are there are still some requirements about half the states maybe 25 do allow for virtual notarization and uh so what this does with sign it's very similar to this online platform that we're we're on today where you'll see the notary in front of you you'll check the credentials of id and all of that and then you can verbally virtually notarize a document but again you got to check what your local laws say as to what's possible in your state but the exciting thing about this is this is probably one of the good things to come out of this pandemic if there is a silver lining are these new technologies like virtual notarization uh one tip i might give you in this area i know like for example california we don't permit virtual notarization we we only have in-person or mobile notarization where a notary will come to you and then you can practice social distancing and signing of the agreement but one tip here is in 2019 montana actually approved a remote notarization for signers out of state so that's also an option is to contact a virtual notary in montana to get some of your documents signed virtually and then finally in signing confidently is keeping a copy of the signed contract and this is what i love about rocket lawyer and and the online platform it serves as a vault where you can store securely and safely your documents that are signed so that at a moment's notice if you needed to refer to it you could pull it out and see the the contents of the agreement you'd have the signed contract right there in the account if it is a wet signature you can upload a copy of it to your rocket lawyer account but keep in mind that any uh any wet signatures that are done with a pen it's still a good idea to keep those uh in in your permanent file to keep those on hand as you uh in case you need to uh bring it out whether it's a dispute in court or an arbitration it's always better to to have the actual original contract in your presence now one of the things uh that that really covers the actual things to think about with contracts there are some additional protections in this time of covid that i think are are worthy of of discussion for small business owners a question i get quite often are questions about liability waivers people are opening their businesses up again and they're concerned rightfully so about people coming to their business and then later on getting sued because they caught covid and they say they caught it at your establishment well the question here is will a live will a liability waiver protect you against covid19 liability and unfortunately uh the jury's still out on this much of that law is determined through case law so as some of these disputes start making their way through the court system we'll have a better idea of whether or not the liability waivers will help of course it's it's better to be safe so you could draft a waiver and and in doing so making sure that it's uh clear and unambiguous as to what's being waived what the situation is you want really clear and concise terms to ensure that the other party fully understands not only the risks that they may have but also the the rights that they're actually waiving that would be key for this type of liability waiver to be enforceable if it did go to litigation and then also keep in mind that this liability waivers won't protect against intentional behavior on your part or grossly negligent behavior or reckless conduct so just something to keep in mind as you explore liability waivers as to whether or not they're a good idea or something that would be valuable for your business and by all means if you have a question again reach out to an on-call attorney and they'll be able to walk you through that another thing to think about is insurance now i'm a huge fan of insurance it allows you to sleep safe at night so if you don't have insurance for your small business this might be a good time to look into that or revisit your current policies of course it's important to have general liability protection that protects you against personal injuries or property damage of course if you've got employees you know about workman's comp insurance it's important that that you have that some new things are rent guarantee insurance this is a fairly new product that will protect landlords um should a tenant not be able to pay their monthly rent so that's a an interesting new product that's uh just sort of making its way onto the market uh in recent uh recent months and years that might be something to look at as something that might be valuable to your business also renters insurance this would cover a tenant's property should something happen at the premises it's good for landlords to consider including that within the lease agreement to require their tenant to have renter's insurance and as well business interruption insurance this is a good one to have if your business is interrupted for something like covid now again though these are it's important to read the language of the insurance policy a lot of you may have heard it on the news there were a lot of restaurants that had business interruption insurance that were not that we're having challenges with the insurance company because they did not consider covid19 and the resulting shutdown as one of the triggering events of the policy so it's important that you definitely look at the policy make sure you understand the language and make sure that some of these unforeseeable things or things like pandemics or epidemics or government shutdowns are included within those types of policies and as mentioned previously definitely revisit any policies that you currently have to make sure that you understand number one what's in it and make sure that it's adequate coverage for what you need and if there's something that you wish you had now is a good time to consider that but ultimately all these things again it's creating order from the chaos and just making sure that you you're prepared to handle this new way of life post covid so with that uh why don't we open it up to questions alyssa great michael thank you that was super helpful information definitely made me feel more comfortable about contracts um so i guess let's jump in um as a reminder actually before we get to um some of the questions that are trickling in um this is the best way to ask a question so just use your phone camera you can scan this qr code it'll take you to the link where you can type in your question and it'll pop up here and we'll we'll ask it to michael or charlie um if you don't want to use the qr code there is a link on the eventbrite invitation um where you signed up um so as we're waiting for stuff to come in here's one um how could we anticipate future issues for a forced major clause like we would have not seen uh coven 19 come and you mentioned what is there anything that we could include to protect us against any and all unforeseen events and that's from steve in new jersey uh thank you steve i appreciate the question uh it's a good question and uh it's the we're seeing unforeseeable events it's the the question uh that that comes to mind but um this is where each specific business really uh would be helped by consulting with an attorney to be able to identify what line of business you're it you're in and then how to foresee uh some of these potential unforeseeable events now something like a a shutdown from covid these are things that you can now include so it's again learning a little bit from past mistakes or past items that are not in the contract themselves um so definitely include things that would cover uh items like covid19 government shutdowns and all that but then it would be good to confer with an attorney and just talk more uh concretely about what your business does that will allow you to foresee some of those things that might come up in the future so that you can add those to a force measure clause this would be different of course for employment contracts versus goods and services and the like but and also online you can you can search and take a look at other force major clauses to see what they include and and a lot of times you can look at languages and other contracts uh on the web and see if that might be applicable to your company great good advice all right um here's one from stacy in connecticut um she says what should i do if i'm anticipating a breach of contract or an agreement from a vendor thank you stacey it's a good question uh again communication reaching out uh to them and having those conversations now that's gonna do a couple of things uh number one it's gonna start the conversation with uh with the vendor uh and in doing so it's gonna secondarily hope to create some sort of compromise or other route to go about uh fulfilling what uh the contract uh what your contract says so um really having that communication is is key i can't stress that enough because then you can put everything on the table understand really what you're dealing with you're not dealing with whenever people don't know what they're dealing with it's it's always a worst case scenario so it can definitely add additional stress and additional concerns so once you put everything on the table you understand where you are and then you can really tackle the situation in hopes of finding some alternatives thank you um here's one from dana in ohio he said or she said uh you mentioned a work from a work from home document in the library uh search for it all over and cannot locate it what is the title of that document uh i believe it's actually within the corona virus area of the website so if you go on rocket lawyer.com go to the orange bar at the top there's a coronavirus section there that should have a work for home agreement um trying to think another way we might be able to get that information yeah uh can you guys hear me yes yes okay great great i wasn't sure it could hear me yeah um it's it's called a work from home agreement uh you can just search uh um it's also available from the coronavirus legal center as well as uh there's another name for it which is a telecommuting agreement so i hope that helps and as always there's folks standing by on the phone to help you also the phone numbers right there on the website great great thank you charlie um i was gonna offer one other quick thing alyssa um earlier uh when folks were asking how do i reduce risk uh there's a there's a clause in in in contracts uh called an indemnification clause and indemnification means if certain things happen one of the parties is going to be responsible for indemnifying the other party um that's something to pay attention to whether you're uh on the hook to indemnify the other part of the agreement or you can use the indemnification provision and agreement to to your advantage in in case of negligence or unforeseen circumstances or you name it those indemnification provisions are are certainly important tools to be aware of in in agreements that's a great great suggestion and also within the rocket lawyer library there's also a separate indemnification agreement and a hold harmless agreement so you could definitely take a look at those two documents as well if it was not included within the contract that you have excellent thank you great information i will continue to encourage everyone to submit a question using the qr code you see on the screen or the link in the eventbrite invitation as everyone's doing that let's go to um this is an anonymous question i'm anticipating some of my tenants not making rent what can i do there's a moratorium on evictions in my state yeah and this is a tricky one because because of the moratoriums within the states a lot of times the tenants are being protected and then the landlords are suffering from the tenants not not paying because of the moratorium it really varies between states there are some that will allow you to still proceed with eviction there are some states that just have a simple rent moratorium that no rent is due and that it will eventually be due it really is specific to your state as to the best way to handle it and really if you look at the orders that have been given by the governor in your state and all those are usually available on the government website you'll see the specific language of the order that the governor has put into effect or in in some cases some of the larger cities may have uh even their own policies and procedures if you look at the language of that then you'll be able to see exactly what you can and cannot do with respect to um evicting a tenant or seeking that the rent that's uh currently under a moratorium yeah and i would just uh that's such an important topic uh the the whole um topic of uh landlords tenants uh rent uh and and of course mortgage payments as well um i'd i just encourage uh everyone um to take advantage of q a um the rules are really michael alluded to it the rules are different in every local jurisdiction every local city county state can have different rules uh nowadays so that's an area where consulting with someone like michael in your local area can really be worth its weight in gold number two for landlords specifically work with your your own lender work with your your bank um and and just be proactive uh um you can't sit back um and expect that your bank is gonna uh be reasonable uh unless you work proactively with them and try to get ahead of it it's a tough situation um the rules are different everywhere so i'd really encourage you to talk to a lawyer and to be you know super proactive uh yourself uh with with uh with your lender to the extent that you need to do so um to protect your interests thank you that was the question i was going to ask personally was what then can the landlord do and it sounds like the theme i'm hearing is communication is key across the board so reach out to the lender speak with the people that you're in the contracts with and just start that dialogue it sounds like i guess one other thing i would i would point out it's this is something that's proactive you know for future tenants but um taking into account that security deposit if you're in a if you're in a situation where there's a competitive situation for uh tenancy that security deposit can be can be bigger and and you know this is an example where maybe that uh would have been a a way to go and michael i'd actually put the question to you have you seen uh landlords maybe not who've been able to uh use the security deposit to se to to bridge their own uh working capital uh in the pandemic yeah absolutely that's one of those things like you had alluded to earlier where each uh jurisdiction is a little bit different some will specifically say within the orders that security deposits can be used in the interim to cover for rent that's not being paid so this is one of those times where it's important to take security deposits make sure they're substantial if it's a residential agreement you may be limited by state law as to how much you can include for commercial leases you don't have those restrictions it's more of a contract negotiation between parties so as charlie had mentioned it might be a good time to to see about getting some additional money put towards a security deposit to protect you in these types of situations oh that's great that's good call thank you very much let's see here we go do you have to go through rocket lawyer to do a virtual notarization no not currently um the notarization would actually be through a virtual notary so that's an outside service um that you would you could find uh local virtual notaries that are available um are really versed in helping folks to to get documents notarized so um you can just use uh lean on us to help get that notary taken care of okay um and then again reminder we've got a few minutes left qr code we can flash that back up on there get your questions in last call [Music] in the meantime question from noreen if i know i'm not going to be able to meet a contract terms how do i have that conversation do i need a lawyer yeah that's it's always more comfortable when you do have an attorney to to help you with that but sometimes i think even a more effective way is is to have that conversation have that tough conversation and come from a place of the vulnerability of i'm not able to meet this but i want to can we come up with some sort of solution so that you're protected and i can get through this tough time so just really approaching it as if uh the situation were reversed and you were on the receiving end of that conversation sometimes just even starting those tough conversations the starting part is the hard part and once they get going sometimes you might find the receiving party a little bit more understanding and very reasonable in in figuring out how to come up to with some sort of compromise now once you do that once you find a compromise or once you find a way forward definitely make sure you put it into writing so that you're clear about the terms and that both parties understand what the expectations are going forward yeah i would i would love to piggyback on that everything michael said is absolutely right and i love how you put the human touch you know just sort of doing the right thing um this is a place where in terms of contract breach where the law actually matches and it always doesn't happen actually matches um doing the right thing if you know that you're going to breach an agreement and you notify the other party of that potential breach well you start the clock ticking where they they have to mitigate those damages so they can't um simply let you know unpaid rent run up or or additional damages because you you're unable to do your part of the bargain they can't just keep tolling additional damages they have actually a duty at law to mitigate those damages so um by by coming up front you can actually reduce your ultimate la your ultimate liability at law that's very that's a great point um here's another good question um can nonprofits use rocket lawyer to sign academic course presentation agreements yes uh for sure um you can be we we basically have a a a document uh for a service agreement document you can just look it up there and you can essentially document any uh type of service agreement um having said that this is one that uh we haven't created a particular document for and uh you just gave us a fantastic idea so whoever sent that in we'd love to talk to you and understand that need better but it sounds like a need that a lot of folks would have and we can also point you directly to that service agreement that can be customized for that situation um but uh i love that one thank you so much for the suggestions yeah that's great and unfortunately whoever sent that question and did not leave a name um so you can still let us know go ahead and just enter that in as a question to follow up with your name and how we can reach you and well i could just yeah listen if i could just say you know our customers are that's why we exist and we love getting uh you know real world examples from our customers um because uh that's how we uh create a lot of the content um that you see on on rocket lawyer so we love the feedback and and uh please let us have it great well good i mean that looks like that's the um it for the questions so on that note um i'd love to have you wrap it up charlie if there's any final words before we uh close for the day well i just want to say thank you to the staples team again for creating this terrific forum for jeff and erica behind the scenes and also alyssa of course uh you're awesome and thank you um i think you're providing a terrific resource uh for for everyone i appreciate the time of the folks who've attended and um and last but not least michael thank you for your time and for being such an important part of the rocket lawyer on-call uh legal network absolutely thank you michael for the great information thank you charlie much appreciated um thank you to every everyone again watching today for your time for the questions um you know uh we will be sending out a recording of this session so if you did miss any portions look out for that in your email and if you have any other questions you can also always go to rocketlawyer.com staples and there's a lot of other great information there as well thanks again and have a good day bye