
ASK YC: Where to find standard user agreements and other boring legal stuff for my startup? - shafqat
After a lot of fruitless searching, I thought I'd ask the YC community for tips on where to find the standard agreements and policies for our web startup. Things like privacy policies, user agreements etc. Of course we can write our own and most likely will do so, but are there any templates out there? Can I just take some good ones and modify them?
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sanj
My fiancee's a lawyer. She cringes when I ask this stuff. Her response was:

"It's like asking 'Where to find standard software and other boring technical
stuff for my startup?'"

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davidw
If you take a standard setup, say Ubuntu Linux, running Postgres and Ruby on
Rails, the ratio of your own lines of code to all the other ones you're
utilizing in the system is very small indeed. And you're free to customize all
that lower-level stuff if you really need to, under very friendly terms.
Unless she means that it's so easy to find and use that it's a silly question?

Software 1, Lawyers 0.

Speaking of which, wasn't YC supposed to open source some of the legal things
they have?

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sanj
If you take all of the case law over the last 300 years, the ratio of your
contract to the existing legal infrastructure is very small indeed.

And you're free to customize all that lower-level stuff if you really need to,
under very friendly terms (it only gets expensive if you have to defend it in
court).

Software 1, Lawyers 1.

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brk
I've never found really good templates online. My process was always something
along the lines of:

1) Dig into my cache of legal docs I've amassed from other companies over the
years (understandably, this probably isn't an option for you). 2) Google
around for quasi-competitors, look for the AUP/TOS docs online for inspiration
3) Blend all this into a doc I write sort of from scratch, sort of from copy-
paste-tweak 4) Send to corporate counsel for final review/approval.

Because I've created my fair share of legal docs over the years, I don't
usually end up spending more the $200-$400 on step #4, but it is VITALLY
IMPORTANT. Even when I was sure I had an air-tight doc (and believe me, I'm
cynical, crafty and paranoid, makes for a good legal-doc writer), I've been
made aware of significant things I've missed or mis-stated. A document that
would never hold up in court, or doesn't enforce what you think it does can be
worse than no doc at all.

There _are_ places that will charge you money for access to their legal
templates, but the couple I've looked at were too boilerplate for my needs.

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shafqat
Great.. thanks for the tips. Any recommendations/ suggestions for 4)?

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brk
What city are you in?

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shafqat
Am actually in Switzerland, but surely it should be location independent
right? Won't most legal counsel be avilable online/via email/phone?

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brk
Yeah, but the laws vary greatly from state to state (in the US), and certainly
from country to country.

Some of the things that might be common in the US (specifying state for
trials, if any) might not apply to you, and things that are more
common/stringent in your area (privacy laws for example) might not be valid or
known to a US-based lawyer.

A guy that I had in mind knows a good part of the US law pretty well, and is
well versed in MA, CA, NY, and DE (states) legalities, but even he would refer
me to someone else if I was dealing with a customer/contract in say Arizona. I
don't imagine that he would want to get involved in Swiss law :)

Switzerland, I can't help... Sorry.

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mattmaroon
For the most part, just take them from your closest competitor and edit to
your satisfaction. We did that in the beginning, and even when we finally got
around to paying attorneys, they did more or less the same thing.

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dhimes
Get a good legal dictionary, and any time you think to yourself, "I wonder why
they used that particular word there?" LOOK IT UP! You'll be surprised. This
is not something to do in the evening over a beer. A textbook wouldn't be a
bad idea, either. Or, at least a trusted online reference.

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thomasswift
wordpress/automattic made theirs with a creative commons license
<http://automattic.com/privacy/> that migth help ya.

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mechanical_fish
I think the last time this question was asked the standard answer was "find
the site that is most like yours and copy their privacy policy". It's not like
these agreements are highly original, proprietary works. Lawyers copy phrasing
from each other all the time.

Of course, you get what you pay for. I'd consider paying a lawyer to glance
through the results of your scavenging before you make any legal commitments.

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mixmax
" Lawyers copy phrasing from each other all the time."

Yes but they know which parts to copy and which parts to write themselves.

That's why you pay them $300 an hour.

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omakase
"Can I just take some good ones and modify them?"

I think that's the best approach. Look for similar sites/services or find a
few that together do the things you do and copy bits and pieces from their
TOS/privacy policy/etc. Depending on what you are doing that is probably good
enough until you get some traction. If you take funding down the road I
imagine this will all get rewritten for you.

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ken
Where were you searching? Hire a lawyer who specializes in startups, and
you'll get them done in no time at all.

And before you ask, if you need graphic design, get a graphic designer, and if
you need good PR, hire a PR firm.

Of all the things a startup has to do, this is quite possibly the easiest.

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shafqat
Searching online/google etc. We're bootstrapping so hiring a laywer is not
ideal, but we will propbably follow the advice of some others and write it
ourselves and then get it reviewed by a lawyer. I cant tell if you were
sarcastic about the rest, but we do our design and pr ourselves. Those add
value so we do it ourselves, but legal jargon doesnt really add value at this
stage, hence my original questions to the YC community. Thanks!

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kingnothing
I will probably take agreements and copy them until I can afford to hire a
lawyer to draft them for my startup, but it is technically copyright
infringement. It's also not the best option for various reasons as others have
already pointed out.

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amobilebiz
Checkout <http://docstoc.com> they have fairly good repository and it is free.
They encourage sharing among the community.

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nickb
They're of dubious copyright. You also have no idea who came up with them and
WHY they added certain sections.

