#103 When Should You Update Your Legal Documents
Having your legal documents in place is one thing. Keeping them up to date and current is another.
Lately I’ve been getting asked a lot about when the right time to update legal documents is. As we get busier throughout the year, these types of updates can fall to the wayside. We get caught up in the process of launching that new course or making changes to our offerings.
But this doesn’t have to be stressful, and there’s more than one way to make sure you’re keeping all your Ts & Cs up to date. Today I talk about the different ways you can do this.
Offerings can change, the way you’re providing services to clients can change, different courses require different Ts & Cs. So, if you are a service-based business, then you need to dive in and update your documents when things change.
Making sure your I’s are dotted and T’s are crossed is not only going to save you time, but it will make for a far more streamlined and pleasant experience for your clients.
Additionally, it’s important to comply with Australian consumer law obligations, and I want to help you put in place some simple practices that will ensure you do this.
I hope you find some useful tips in today’s episode on how and when to review your legal documents, and in turn, protect your business the best you can.
Full Transcript:
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[00:00:16] Hello everyone and welcome back to the Rise Up in Business Podcast. Today I wanna talk to you about something that is really topical at this time of year, so really appropriate that I dive in and share this episode with you. And the topic today is, when should you update your legal documents? This is coming up a lot at the moment in my business when clients are reaching out to ask, "Tracey, I've got my legals in place, when should I update them? Is there any magic to it? Is there a particular time?" The answer to the question is, there's two times that I think you need to dive into your legal documents to update them. The first is obviously, when something changes. Having your legal documents in place is one thing. Keeping them up to date and current is another. So they're not set-and-forget So once we've taken the time to develop our legal documents and make sure that they're doing all the things they need to do and they're protecting your business the way that they should, we need to make sure we allocate time or prioritise a review when things change or annually. So let's dive into the first, when things change.
[00:01:30] So if you have your legal documents set up in your business and you're talking things like client service agreements or your business Ts & Cs, as we often call them, your website Ts & Cs, or your privacy policy, what do you need to do there to keep them up to date and current? It's really simple.
[00:01:48] It's not rocket science. If you are a service-based business and you're providing services to your clients, then you need to dive in and update your documents when things change, such as your offerings, the way you are providing your services to your clients, your prices, your packages, there might be a change to inclusions in your services or exclusions in your services. I have a lot of creative clients reaching out at the moment to say to me, Tracey, in the last 12 months I've had this pain point pop up three times. Can we dive in and update our legals or our client service agreement, as some people call them, to reflect this so that I don't have to keep dealing this, dealing with this with my clients and I can simply point them to the documents or the contract or the Ts & Cs to navigate through that tricky situation. It's gonna save time, it's gonna make for a far more streamlined and pleasant experience for the clients. I really wanna have this incorporated, and my answer is, hell yes. That's what I'm here for. And that's what we do.
[00:02:50] So things like your service offerings and your packages, they need to be revisited when things change. Similarly, if you have a team and the nature of what they're doing has changed. So if some of your team members have been promoted, if pay rates have changed, if roles and responsibilities have changed, it's a good time to dive in and update your documents to reflect what's actually current for those team members.
[00:03:17] With your website, if what you are doing on your website has changed, then we need to update your website Ts & Cs. We might need to develop some click wraps for you to make sure that everything is happening as it should at the right time and in the right place. So if you now have a course that you've launched, or if you now have a podcast, or if you now have a blog, or you've got some new freebie downloads for your lead magnet, those are the types of things that I wanna know about if you're my client, those are the types of things that we want to know about so we can dive in and update your documents for you. So courses have their own unique set of Ts & Cs that are required because no two courses are the same and how you offer your course will be very different to how the next person offers theirs.
[00:04:03] So what's your money back guarantee period? What's your refund policy? Do you have payment plans? What's included? What's the life of the course? How long do people get access for? All those types of things need to be included and when you change those things, we need an opportunity to go in and update the Ts & Cs. And if you do have a new offering for sale so people can purchase on your website, we need to make sure that those click wrap terms and conditions at the point of purchase, are available in full to the consumer before they decide to purchase from you, and they need to tick a box to make sure that you are protected at law, and that those Ts and Cs are binding between you and the consumer. This is all Australian consumer law obligations. This is all making sure the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed to make sure that your business is protected always as it should be. So that's what we look at when things change and when we need to dive in and make updates to reflect those changes.
[00:05:04] If you forget or if in the process of launching your new thing or making your changes to your offerings, if you forget or if updating your legals falls to the side, that's okay because the second time that I say that your legal documents should be updated is annually, so once a year.
[00:05:24] Most people find it a really fabulous time to do that, either at the beginning of a calendar year or at the beginning of the new financial year. I'm both. As you can imagine, if you've been following me for a while, you'll know that I'm a little self-confessed OCD when it comes to these things, so I do it twice.
[00:05:39] I don't expect you to though. There's enough on your plate already. You're already wearing all the hats as a business owner, so I don't expect you to be as enthusiastic as me. But what I do say is if you haven't already downloaded a free copy of my Annual Legal Checklist that I've designed for service-based small business owners, please jump over to the website and grab a copy.
[00:05:59] The link is in the show notes. I've designed this checklist for this reason, precisely this reason, so that as a business owner, you can pull the checklist out of the top drawer or the digital file wherever you keep it, once a year, hence the name, the Annual Legal Checklist. Look at it once a year, run your eye over it and it will alert you there and then to whether or not you need to pick up the phone or flick me an email so that we can dive in and do some revisions for you. Things like your client service terms, your websites, your insurances, your lease, your team documents, all the sorts of things that you need to be thinking about as a business owner, they're all set out in the Annual Legal Checklist for you. So if you haven't taken the time to pause through the year to update your legals because things have changed, then please choose either the beginning of the calendar year or the beginning of the financial year to carve out some time to pull out the checklist to run through it and just tick off everything that's okay and doesn't need attention, and highlight the things that do need some attention. Then reach out, by all means, let's have a chat. We can talk about what needs to be updated and we can put a plan in place. So it really is that simple. So to answer your question, "when should you be updating your legal documents?", either when things change or pull them out and review them once a year so we can identify whether we do need to make any updates. I hope you found that helpful. If you have any business friends or business colleagues that you think would benefit from the answer to that question as well, please feel free to share this podcast with them because that will help me achieve my goal this year of getting this podcast into the ears of more business owners.
[00:07:38] As always, thank you so much for listening and I'll catch you next time.
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