The other day I was going back and forth with a potential client about re-designing his web site. It’s a small site, and I worked with this person before – so it didn’t take us very long to hammer out the details. The next step was writing out the contract and getting him to sign off on it. I had heard about a service where you could electronically aquire a signature, so I figured what the hell, I’ll give this a try.

In the last few months I’ve been seeing a common occurrence. It’s either a freelancer complaining about a client or a client complaining about a freelancer. I suppose a little friction isn’t all that uncommon, especially if the people involved don’t have a good understanding with each other. Most of the time, the problem can be traced to a simple fact: The client and the freelancer do not have a contract, or have an incomplete one.