Your Legal Fairy Godmother
If you have a contract you need to listen if you don't have a contract you definitely need to listen.
Heather Stanford Gould has been dubbed the Legal Fairy Godmother to the wedding industry. She has two businesses - Stanford Gould and Stanford Gould Online – and she helps you lovely creative geniuses with all the legal contractual and compliance advice that you don’t know where to start with.
Client contracts, supplier agreements, freelancer contracts, insurance and liability issues, GDPR – all that tedious but crucial stuff you know you need for your wedding business.
Contracts aren't Sexy
Heather starts by explaining the #yourlegalfairygodmother and how that came about. Contracts aren't sexy, that aren't instagram worth and people get scared and in feeling that way avoid dealing with them. However, by creating the hashtag it opened up contracts to becoming a little more accessible for a creative audience. Making it a little more creative like the industry rather than trying to make the industry more like a law firm.
So the hashtag was born to meet the industry where we are at and make the subject a little less scary looking.
Your Legal Fairy Godmother went out on her own
Having worked as a dispute resolution lawyer Heather decided she wanted a change and initially set Stanford Gould Ltd up with the aim of helping small businesses with their contractual requirements. She wanted to make this very important STUFF accessible not only from a jargon perspective but also from a price point perspective.
After working with a commercial sports photographer she was recommended to a wedding photographer and the rest, as they say, is history. She saw more and more wedding professionals and so saw a need within the wedding niche and decided to dedicate her talents and abilities to helping wedding suppliers.
What are the biggest contract mistakes people make
There are huge differences between the contracts that have crossed the doors of Stanford Gould. From 3 sentences on the back of an invoice which is probably the worst. Not only is 3 lines inadequate but sending it on your invoice is too late you might as well not have bothered. At the other end you get the this is how we are going to work this is what we are going to do which can be impenetrable to a client. Often there are three significant gaps in contracts whatever the length:
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Edited and produced by Donna Eade
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