Freelance BBS: Clients - Good contract boilerplates?

I've gotten tired of having to do the back-and-forth with the lawyers for every contract that I enter into. In fact, I'm now working on a job where it's supposedly going to end this week, and I still haven't signed the contract.

I work as a freelance unix systems and networking guru, and most of the time the issues that I have are with the absolutely fascistic intellectual property and non-compete clauses that are in the contract.

Let me provide some examples. Since a lot of my work draws on publicly-available, free software, I *can't* sign contracts that, for instance, want me to sign over the rights for all used software.

Another common sticking point is the frequent inclusion of a clause stating that all work I do anytime that I'm under contract, on my systems or on theirs, whether or not that time is billed to the client, as well as work done for a year after, is subject to the company deciding that it's theirs.

Now, obviously these examples are ridiculous - in the former, I have no ability to sign over the rights to works that I don't in any way own, and in the latter I can't make my professional life depend on the whim of a company that I may no longer even be doing business with.

So, what I'd like to be able to do is find some boilerplate contracts that are good from the consultants end, and use those as a starting point from my end, instead of having to negotiate with corperate lawyers, who commonly don't really understand what service I am providing, to make the same change each time I'm getting signed up.

-Peter

Unfortunately, going back and forth is the nature of drafting contracts. It sounds like you're on the right track, though, by knowing what to look for when you're negotiating the contracts.

It is generally the nature of giant corporations to try to get "as much as they can" from you. Working off of their contract and tailoring it to your specifications is probably a better bet than for every consultant to walk in the door with their own "boilerplate" contract.

Although they may not understand exactly what service you are providing (just as you may not entirely understand the reasoning behind each clause in their contracts), you are better off knowing which parts of the contracts need to be modified for your purposes and negotiating those points are they arise.

- A Corporate/IT Lawyer