The 5 Best Ways Agencies Can Save Money on Legal Fees This Year

As a lawyer who advises ad and marketing professionals, I’m regularly reminded by clients that excessive legal fees are not a fun way to spend marketing dollars. This is understandable, and to me it’s also a somewhat welcome point of view. If that sounds like an unusual perspective coming from “legal,” hear me out: it is always less costly in the long run to have a proactive approach to the legal matters that regularly arise in the business of marketing. Making a smart investment up-front in some solid legal infrastructure saves your agency the important commodities of time and money later. So, what are some of these “smart investments” that allow agencies to save on pricey legal fees? Have a Model Agency-Client Contract in Place – Note the use of the term “model,” which is a deliberate choice over the more popular term “form.” This is because while I am decidedly “anti-form,” your agency likely has (I last I hope it has) some consistent business practices that apply to every client, such as intellectual property ownership, payment milestones, and liability limitation. Your clients are not commodities, and neither is the work you do for them, so I advise against approaching your dealings with them with a fill-in-the-blanks form. Instead, save time by having model contract terms and conditions developed one time, and modify or customize them client-by-client, or by project, as you have the need. It’s also my experience that the absence of model contract language makes it more likely that the agency will just skip the step altogether and start the work with no contract – one of the easiest ways an agency can cost itself extra money on excessive legal fees if the [...]