Unlock the Power of eSignature Lawfulness for Independent Contractor Agreements

How to eSign a document: e-signature lawfulness for Independent Contractor Agreement

what's up guys thank you for tuning in my name is attorney jasmine mullen allen with jma law plc and you are here because you want to know more about the e-contracts bundle you want to know more about an operating agreement an independent contractor agreement a non-disclosure agreement or a copyright assignment agreement so it sounds really lawyerly and complicated these terms that you may not recognize but today i'm going to break it down for you so you understand what each agreement is in the purpose and function and why your business as an entrepreneur as a small business owner why you need it okay so in case you guys did not know i'm running a major promo right now for whoever watches these videos throughout you have to watch the whole video because the reason why i did that is because we need to be educated on these things black owned businesses entrepreneurs small business owners we don't have access to capital in generational wealth because we're misinformed we don't know how to protect our property we don't know how to protect our liability both personal and business liability we don't know how to you know just protect ourselves all the way around to maximize the amount of money that we can make and so i want us to get this information that is my passion we have to get this information so that way we can set the groundwork we can lay the foundation to build multi you know billion multi-billions businesses are filled with investments and wealth and partners and employees and enterprises right and so i hid these promo codes within these videos because i thought it was a clever way to get you guys to watch everything you know how our teachers used to do we was in college you can't just fast forward through you got to watch the whole thing so yes so yes alright so let's hop into the independent contractor agreement this is one of my favorite contracts and one of the most important ones so let's back up who is entering into an independent contractor agreement it's typically a business okay so i'll use brand better with jazz my business as an example and an outside person and outside company or somebody that they're going to be working with in order to serve the businesses customers and or clients i think a good example of this is building houses right so i'm blessed we are blessed we were able to build our house last year we moved in august of 2021 okay so one important thing that i noticed about the building process is you have the company you know that you're actually working with to buy the house and pick out you know your preferences and you know you're settling on the price then you have that separate company who's doing the lending right they're not necessarily with that company but they typically have an independent contractor agreement with them where this company is the one that's actually selling the house and quite frankly owns the homes and this company is the lender who's contracted with them to help serve the buyer okay so that's the first contractor relationship right there's with the lender and with the um selling company and i'm trying to do this without getting into who we went through or whatever but it was ryan holmes they were great then then you have all these other contractor agreements because ryan holmes themselves aren't single-handedly getting out there and building the house like our sales guy isn't coming up here you know what i mean and literally like laying the foundation for the house no they outsource that work they outsource that work they have contractors and those of you that are within the building you guys know you you can be a contractor right like to come in and do certain parts some of them are laying the foundation and doing like the structure some of them are doing like the electricity some of them are responsible for like the water and plumbing right they all have different responsibilities and they all have independent contractors agreements why what is the purpose a is much cheaper like why doesn't ryan holmes just okay like all you guys are just employees of ryan holmes right and this is just my understanding right i'm not sure if this is actually how they do it but this is my understanding that these guys are contractors it's cheaper like you already have your business you're already building houses out here why not we have this continual contractor agreement where you're coming in and partnering with our business to provide this service or this product to our clients and our customers okay so it's cheaper you limit your liability right i don't know specifically what's going on in their agreement but in most contractor agreements the base business isn't responsible for the negligence right or the errors or the malfeasance of the contractor they're responsible for that your business is responsible for that we don't have nothing to do with that right because we hired you for a and you went on and you did this or you messed something up okay now the important thing is i can speak on what's typical in a contractor relationship but it all comes down to what the two parties agree to that's what's governing right um i'm not going to get into it too much but one thing you still have to think about is regardless of what the two parties agree to the irs has their guidelines for what's considered a contractor the state has their guidelines for what's considered a contractor um judges you know they go by statutes and cases that's governing authority on what's considered a contractor and so you may say hey um i work for such and such business as a contractor i i get there from nine to five and when i get there they tell me everything that i need to do and they pay me such a such amount of money every two weeks and um you know i get like retirement and all these benefits you could have an independent contractor agreement all day long but if it gets in front of a judge they're gonna say no this is an employee situation okay so i think it's important there's two things at work here i'm advising business owners on the importance of contractor agreements to protect your business but you also want to be advised on how you have to actually work in that thing like you know if you have all this behavioral control over what that person does they're going to look like an employee or um you know you are dictating all these different things or they have to come in or work this amount of hours and this is how they're supposed to execute their job they're going to look like an employee regardless of what's in that contractor agreement so you have to protect yourself on that end as well that's a different video in a different conversation but it's important to say okay so as i stated those of you who watch this entire video is going to get the code the secret code for the 50 discount okay 50 which means you'll be able to purchase these contracts for 200 total all right the code the first word for the code is founders s o u n d e r s stay tuned to get the second word going back to the actual agreement why is it important to have this one you need them to know that they're not your employee but they are their own contractor they're hired for a specific purpose this is how much they're going to get paid you're not responsible for no unemployment insurance you're not responsible for workers comp you're not responsible for a bunch of things because guess what you're not my employee you're a contractor additionally what you create so going back to you know the building um those contractors can't build the house and then say all right let's sell it now can't do that what you create what you build what comes out of this relationship we own we're paying you for a service so that we then can provide it to our clients and our customers all of that is in your contractor agreement people may say okay jasmine like we know what a contractor is but just imagine like having this and don't have a contract like the contractor can easily say no i did it i built it i created it it's mine what's stopping them from assuming it as as theirs like they can do that because they did make it they can do that the only thing that's stopping them is the agreement that they agreed to releasing all rights to that thing and the contractor agreement as you may have noticed overlaps with the copyright assignment a lot when it comes to who owns this thing after it's done um i'll just use a publishing company as an example a publishing company may outsource a lot of its services right um they have to get somebody to do the artwork they might get somebody to do the editing they might get somebody else to fit everything on the pages everything might not come through their publishing company especially if it's a small business so they have all these contractor agreements with these people in order to create this book for their client um and it's very important that they have this agreement because if not hey guess what the artwork that the illustrator just created for this book they can just use it for something else they could just use it for themselves they could just sell it they could say look hey i did a beautiful job this is actually my best work you know what here y'all go but i'm gonna keep a copy for me and i'm gonna use it for something i'm gonna work on later and sell it like it can get that messy when you don't have an independent contractor agreement now if you have an independent contractor agreement you can address the intellectual property there where you don't need a copyright assignment agreement in addition to that um you can almost like include the copyright assignment provisions inside the independent contractor agreement that releases those rights to the business i think the copyright assignment agreement is more essential when there's not this um ongoing independent contractor relationship right like if i'm just getting you to create me a logo i don't necessarily need an entire independent contractor agreement i just need you to release the rights to the logo to me so just sign this copyright assignment agreement some other things that are addressed in an independent contractor agreement might be a little bit similar to the operating agreement that we talked about where you know what do we do about confidential information trade secrets all those things the contractor has to know that this is the businesses they can't just take some things that they've gathered from your business from working on this particular project and just take it and run with it and use it for themselves but in that agreement you know they release all rights they can't share that information with anybody that's the businesses also liability you know um businesses a general rule businesses are not responsible for the negligence or malfeasance of the contractor right their own business is responsible for that now there are some exceptions to that rule depending on the jurisdiction that you're in but generally generally the business is not responsible for the contractor's mistakes they have to pay for it they have to make up for it it's on them now we know for the employee you know you're under the authority it's called vicarious liability you're under the authority of your employer and so you know you mess up they have to pay for it especially if it's doing your job like you're doing your job during your work hours under the description that they gave you and you mess up that's on the business that's on the employer the benefit of a contractor agreement is that's not on the employer that's on the contractor this is very important because these things happen and what are you going to do when they happen because guess what you're going to have a client on the other side it doesn't care whose fault it is they're just going to want it resolved they're just going to want their money back they're going to want to do over they're going to want a refund and so are you going to put that money on the contractor you know are there certain exceptions where okay if this if this happens the business will take care of it but if this happens it's the contract how do we know how do we know because you have an agreement and it's called an independent contractor agreement thanks for making it this far for this video the second word for the promo code is flex you've already heard the first word i spelled it out for you guys the second word is flex f l e x so you take the first word you put it with the second word and you'll be able to get your 50 discount for the e-contracts bundle so guys remember for these contracts i'm giving you a brief overview of the importance of these contracts right you can schedule a power hour business strategy call with me for a hundred dollars where i actually get into the weeds of the contract tailor-made for your business how can your business most benefit from this contract and moreover what can i do to assist you right you have an attorney here you don't like this certain provision all right let's revise it right so we'll talk about that we'll talk about the services that i offer we'll talk about the ways that i can revise it and make it most beneficial to you and some things that may be some additional things that may be needed because mind you these contracts are governing the dealings and interactions with this other party so when something goes wrong we hope that nothing goes wrong but it's life like things always go wrong when you guys are in front of a judge you can say here judge this is the agreement that we have in place that's typical for most jurisdictions the judges are going to use the agreements that the parties agreed to okay that's the law that's the governing authority for that matter be sure to catch the rest of the videos regarding the other e-contracts bundle because if this was beneficial to you those will be as well okay so thank you for tuning in and i hope that this provided some wisdom insight for you to take a step further in your business and i wish you that all of my services are listed on my website at .jmall.org