IT consultancy contract: client version

About this contract

This document is suitable for use by any organisation in any industry who wishes to hire a consultant to advice on information technology or systems. It gives you strong protection of your intellectual property to which the consultant is likely to have access.

The size of the consultant’s organisation is not really relevant. As drawn, we provide strong terms that will suit you if you are engaging a firm, but these can easily be lightened to suit taking on a self-employed expert.

We have structured this contract so that it allows for the possibility of future assignments under the same terms. Legal matters are separated from the schedule of work to be done, so that if you do want to the consultant to carry out further work, all you need do is to update the schedule and refer to the same terms as the basis of the new contract. There is no additional editing to do if you expect never to re-employ.

This document is based on our standard consultant contract for a client. The differences are related to our assumption that your business requires a higher level of intellectual property protection than most, together with better control for you, the client, over matters related to work conditions and security.

Accordingly, the type of work to be performed could be varied. It may be advising on hardware or company strategy; project managing the installation of software systems; analysing data and recommending change, or some other form of reporting that requires expert knowledge.

There are options in several areas, notably contract summary, payment systems and working arrangements.

Contents

• Definitions and interpretation
• Preliminary legal matters
• Avoidance of conflicts of interest
• Consultant's status and obligations
• Work management procedure
• Fees and expenses
• Option for use of sub-contractors
• Work for other clients
• No competition
• Confidentiality
• Intellectual property
• Who owns new intellectual property
• Duration and termination
• Mutual indemnities
• Other legal provisions
• Publicity and announcements
• Miscellaneous matters

We include over 2,500 words of helpful and informative drafting notes so that you can edit the document easily to your exact requirements.