
Messed up a freelancing project, client is threatening legal action - sadfreelancer
Hello.<p>I&#x27;m a junior who has recently took up a freelancing project. We agreed on a milestone based scheme $6000 for the whole project. For the first two months everything went smoothly and I delivered on time, and have been paid on time as well.<p>However the project was increasing in scope, and unfortunately we did not draft a contract&#x2F;explicit milestones and I found the project was beginning to get more complicated than I thought. All of the code I wrote was already pushed to git. Due to I guess the pressure at school (finals week), some issue with my SO, financial problems, I just got burned out and stopped replying to my client. At this point I was paid half ($3000) of the amount, and I feel like I&#x27;ve completed half of the milestones as well.<p>A few months later I received a letter threatening legal action such as fraud from my client. I knew it was a shitty thing to do to simply stop replying to him, but I was at a precarious time in my life where I even contemplated suicide. Thankfully I don&#x27;t contemplate those thoughts anymore, but I feel myself going through that spiral of depression again seeing this threat of legal action.<p>What are my options?
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elmerfud
First thing you should do is realize your feelings are irrelevant to a
business arrangement. I point this out because I'm not sure you realize this.

Second, talk to a lawyer at least for a free consultation on this matter. The
answers you'll get her will range from past experiences to wild guesses, and
will be of dubious helpfulness in your specific situation. In dealings where
summertime brings up lawyer, it's wisest to stop taking to them and talk to a
lawyer.

If the later advises you should work with the client to finish the project.
Ultimately what the client wants is the work done. For the remainder of the
work work with them to build a detailed statement of written with your
deliverables.

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Jamesbeam
Most of advice in this thread is bad advice.

1\. Fix your mental health issues. Top Priority. If you kill yourself at some
point because you can't get out of the depression spiral by yourself everyone
will be at loss.

2\. Get a lawyer. Nobody here can and should give you legal advice.

3\. Learn from your probably expensive mistake. You are an adult, whatever
decision you make in life will have consequences. Man up and take
responsibility for your mistakes.

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einsteinbob
Talk to some of the senior law students at your school or the law professor.
But in the end you failed to honor a contract. You need to repay in full the
owner. You need to finish the project for your self health. Next time you do
contract work, make sure its all mapped out milestones etc. Make the client
agree about extra scope of services work (more money for you). And have a
backup plan formulated if you need third party help to meet deadlines, extra
people or whatever.

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SolProg
IANAL, so take these with a grain of salt. A few suggestions:

1\. Explain him the problem and offer a full refund. 2\. Explain him the
problem and offer to continue work for a smaller fee if he drops the lawsuit.

Worse thing you can do is to completely cut communications with a client.
People tend to understand that you are going through a rough patch if you talk
to them.

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svennek
Even if the following seems extremely client focused, I am a fellow
freelancer.

First acknowledge that a client pays you to produce something, he finds
valuable. He does NOT pay you to spend x hours programming... (even if you
bill by the hour).

The milestone based payment is for your benefit (so that you have a steady
cashflow, and that your risk of him not paying goes down towards completion).

The client really only cares about one of the milestones... the last.. (or at
most a few, that enables him to do stuff with the software he wanted).

That you completed 50% of the milestones might be either something useful to
him, or not. Even if he has access to the source code you already wrote,
chances are, that any new contractor wants to start over from scratch (I
would).

So from his perspective, he paid you 3,000 dollars and you delivered nothing
(worthy to him). No wonder he is unhappy. 3k$ may be pocket change for him, or
it may have killed his project forever..

As for options. First of all, don't run from him, that only makes stuff worse.
If possible, set up a meeting in person (that is gonna suck for you, but it
really makes a difference).

Tell him, honestly, what went wrong. As for the expanding requirements, try to
agree to share the blame for that. Most of the other stuff is on your
shoulders only, and you have to accept the blame for that.

Apologize unconditionally, except for the expanding requirements.

Now, it is time to look forward.

Offer him to complete the project, or offer him some refund if he won't let
you complete it. Ideally you should offer him close to a full refund, but you
probably don't have cash for that.

If the project is completed by somebody else and you cannot pay anything back,
offer him to do something else as a freebie...

And most important of all, learn from the experience. As much as you depend on
the clients to pay you on time, the clients depend of you to deliver something
useful.

For most clients (especially not steady businesses) they have allocated
something like three-quarters of all their money to you, and they probably
cannot raise more...

Don't take on project you know will be hard/impossible to finish due to time
or skill constraints WITHOUT being frank about it...

I know it probably looks bleak now, but if you are any good you will have a
long career in front of you. The soft skills (negotiations, keeping your word
etc) matters as much as the hard skills (programming or what ever).

Especially your word, do what you can to keep it! and if you are in risk of
not keeping it, tell the client up front. You client might accept a slightly
reduced version to hit an important date and then get the final version
slightly later - but you don't know if you don't communicate..

