Hi Kevin,
I'm thinking of how to protect ourselves for future jobs. I believe we could become victims of scope creep... where the client keeps making changes. I've been thinking a lot about what has been going on as far as the client have been doing to us. We've been running around the maypole, so to speak as he keeps making changes as we go along. An email is a legal contract until another email comes along and supersedes that one. If you refuse the other emails and hold him to the first email.. that's one thing, but this client has been changing as he goes along, and you have accepted that, so the original email or contract can't really be enforced.
I'm thinking of how to protect ourselves for future jobs. I believe we could become victims of scope creep... where the client keeps making changes. I've been thinking a lot about what has been going on as far as the client have been doing to us. We've been running around the maypole, so to speak as he keeps making changes as we go along. An email is a legal contract until another email comes along and supersedes that one. If you refuse the other emails and hold him to the first email.. that's one thing, but this client has been changing as he goes along, and you have accepted that, so the original email or contract can't really be enforced.
I have an idea that might change some of that. Maybe you could put together a sort of template of things that you need to know before starting a job, and have the client fill it out. Anything outside of that template would be outside of the original scope of the contract. This template would serve as a binding contract, and would be less formal than a real legal contract. This would prevent the client from trying to wriggle out of an existing 'email contract' to make changes or get a discount or not pay at all due to some change he/she made in an email.
I was going to send this in an email, but then thought you would probably want it here instead.
