What is a Consultancy Agreement?
A consultancy agreement allows a person or business (client) to contract a consultant to perform services over a specific period of time or a specific deliverable. The client owns all the copyright and intellectual property (IP) arising from the consultant and will remunerate the consultant for their services.
The consultant undertakes to perform the services agreed with due care and protect the client’s confidential information such as trade secrets. Any losses incurred due to the consultant’s negligence, or breach of duty, will be directed towards the consultant.
Consultancy agreements are used to:
- Appoint a self-employed consultant to provide services
- Appoint a consultant through intermediary company to provide services
- Provide consultancy services to a client company on a self-employed basis
- Provide consultancy services to a client's business through an intermediary company
The consultant providing services is an independent contractor and therefore not an employee of the client company which means that they are responsible for their own national insurance and pension contributions.
Key features of a Consultancy Agreement:
A consultancy agreement should outline the consultancy work to be undertaken and state a start date and the duration of the work. It should include clauses relating to confidentiality and IP and will include details relating to mutual termination and notice.
Under a consultancy service agreement, a consultant is obligated to:
- Ensure the provision of consultancy services is complete and on time
- Invoice client periodically
- Protect the client’s confidential information
- Have professional liability insurance
The Legislate consulting agreement also allows the client to specify the nature of the services and whether the consultant is expected to provide a deliverable.
Under a consultancy agreement, the client will own all ensuing copyright and intellectual property rights in return of remuneration.
The Legislate consulting contract template contains all the appropriate relevant to:
- Warranties
- Waivers
- Data protection
- Confidential information and non solicitation
- Indemnification
- The governing law and dispute resolution
- The nature and date of termination of this agreement
Benefits of the Legislate Consulting agreement template
Legislate’s consulting services agreement:
- Allows a consultant to perform services on a hourly, daily, weekly basis for a fixed or on-going basis
- Allows a consultant to deliver a deliverable
- Is lawyer reviewed and written in plain English
- Clearly defines the obligations and rights of the Client and Consultant
- Allows users to manage the delivery of services and deliverables from their legislate dashboard
- Gives your consultants confidence in your company by adopting quick and efficient processes from the get-go
- Termination of the agreement by written notice or breach of contract
On Legislate, you can also access all the additional documents you need to grow your business including Non-disclosure agreements, employment agreements, privacy policies and staff handbooks.
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When should I use a Consultancy contract?
You should use a consultancy agreement whenever you intend to hire a someone or a company to deliver consultancy services. For example when you are contracting a part-time marketing consultant or a fixed-term software developer. You can customise Legislate's consultancy agreement to a number of situations include:
- part-time or fixed-term SEO consultant
- part-time or fixed-term Social media consultant
- part-time or fixed-term UX consultant
And many others roles including fixed-term marketing consultants and part-time software developers.
How to create a Consultancy Agreement with Legislate
To create a consultancy agreement on Legislate simply set the terms of the services and invite the client and consultant to the agreement. Once they have previewed the agreement and accepted the terms, they can both sign the agreement. The contract can be created by the client paying for the services or the consultant delivering the services.
For more information on how to create your agreements with Legislate, sign up, read our Consultancy agreement tutorial or book an introductory call with one of our team members.
