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Most freelance comms consultants don’t have a proper contract. They work from an email exchange, or a statement of work that someone adapted from something else years ago, or nothing at all. This is fine until something goes wrong, a client disputes what was agreed, delays payment, or asks for work that was never part of the original brief. At that point, the absence of a clear written agreement is a significant problem.
A contract doesn’t need to be long or written in legal language. It needs to be clear about what was agreed, so that if something goes wrong you have a document to refer to.
You need a contract even for clients you trust
The argument against contracts, “we have a good relationship, it’ll be fine”, misses the point. A contract isn’t a sign of distrust. It’s a record of what you’ve both agreed to, which protects both parties when things change: when personnel moves, when the brief evolves, when someone who wasn’t in the original conversation takes over the relationship.
The clients most likely to cause payment problems are not the ones who seem difficult at the start. They’re often the ones the relationship seemed fine with until something shifted. A contract helps you navigate that shift professionally rather than personally.
What a freelance comms contract needs to cover
The essential sections are: scope of work (what you’ll deliver, and what’s explicitly not included), timeline, fee and payment terms, what happens if the project is cancelled, intellectual property ownership, confidentiality, and how disputes will be handled.
The scope section is the most important. Be specific: list the deliverables, the number of revision rounds included, and any assumptions the project is based on. Vague scope is where most contract disputes start.
Payment terms should specify when invoices will be raised, when payment is due, and what happens if payment is late. A kill fee, a percentage of the total fee payable if the client cancels the project partway through, is worth including. It’s rarely invoked but important when it is.
Intellectual property: who owns the work
By default in UK law, copyright in work you create belongs to you, not the client, unless you transfer it. Most clients will expect to own the work they’ve commissioned, which is reasonable, but it’s worth being explicit about this in the contract rather than leaving it ambiguous.
The standard arrangement is to transfer copyright to the client on receipt of full payment. This protects you if a client tries to use work they haven’t paid for.
A template to work from
The freelance contract template covers all of the above in plain English, with shaded fields for the project-specific details and standard clauses for the rest. Comes as an editable Word document and a PDF reference version.
Freelance Contract Template
Editable Word document and PDF reference version. Designed for UK-based freelancers.