Where can I find good legal documents?

For those not familiar: Common Paper https://commonpaper.com/standards/ seems to have the best free standard docs.

Here's the post where they describe it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36043944

here's another one: https://www.avodocs.com/

I agree with what lots have written here. The biglaw firms that have notable tech practices are good and have resources for brand new startups. For example, CooleyGo or Latham Drive or Wilson Sonsini's term sheet generator. For PPs and Terms, I tend to start with competitor services and see how theirs are written/compare clauses. The more established the company, the more likely it is that you can rely on them to have had their own docs vetted by decent attorneys, though of course quality isn't guaranteed. I have used TermsFeed as a starting point before.

For employment matters, SHRM's "Tools and Samples" resources are good.

Thompson Reuters has a free 7 day trial of their "Practical Law" product, though I haven't explored it personally.

Techcontracts.com is a good resource.

ETA: these are all starting points - the docs always have to be reviewed and modified for your particular circumstances. But they’re reasonable for the first draft.

(I do outside general counsel work for small startups)

Good luck!

Here are some early Startup related ideas, links, tools that I gather to not repeat my answers to founders asking for them. For Legals, please go to https://docs.inboxstartup.com/operate/legal

Quite a lot of the founders from the mentioned links/startup/companies are friends or part of a cohort. This is a like an Inbox and I might need to keep cleaning them up.

Kyle Mitchell is a lawyer that can program, and has done a ton of open source work on legal docs: https://projects.kemitchell.com/

For example, here are his employment/hiring docs: https://squareoneforms.com/

There are some templates that might be helpful here: https://www.techcontracts.com/contracts

However, if you want to start something big, it's better to find a lawyer to draft your legal documents, especially the ones you publish online (from a lawyer).

> Where can I find good legal documents?

A lawyer. A lawyer. A lawyer. A lawyer. END OF STORY.

And I'm saying that from a perspective of someone who used to use free/cheap template docs a long time ago.

The hard reality is that free/cheap ready-made docs are highly unlikely to be suitable for your business context for one or more of the following reasons:

          - Jurisdiction of you or your clients
          - Insurance requirements from your insurer or your clients insurer
          - Clauses not there that should be there
          - Clauses there that are not good enough
          - Clauses there that should not be there

Free/cheap docs are all fun and games until the shit hits the fan and you need to rely on them. Its at that point you'll find yourself wishing you ponied up for a lawyer. Trust me, been there, done that, got the postcard, never again.

Paying a lawyer to help you with legal documents is a necessary business expense. Just like paying taxes, either you pay upfront or you pay the penalty later.

I work for iubenda (https://www.iubenda.com/) and it's a precious tool for website compliance. I was a user myself before joining the team.

You can get: Privacy Policy/T&C/Cookie and Consent Banner as well as a Consent Database tool.

The onboarding starts with a scan of your website, and you are suggested to use specific configurations based on the legislation that will apply to your website. Moreover, iubenda scans regularly your website and checks for non-compliance clues (e.g. a missing service in your privacy policy).

Pricing: there's a free plan for you to start with a basic configuration + pay as you grow.

I had a similar problem and found that the ones I made from free sites or using different terminology are often wrong or say the wrong things that don't fit our service. In the end, we outsourced it to a professional legal service. (The ones that make them for free or for a fraction of the cost are often templated and fill-in-the-blank, which is attractive, but has obvious limitations).

https://www.termsfeed.com/ is handy for TOS, T&C, Privacy Policies etc.

For UK orientated legalese, https://simply-docs.co.uk/ is quite useful for certain things.

You could try Termly: https://termly.io/

The world would be a better place if we could all just be happy with standardized legal agreements: the pros/cons are easier to know ahead of time for both parties, you don't need much legal advice around them, and there isn't a lot of legal busy work that nobody really wants to do (even lawyers).

Having said that, the common answer from a lawyer of "it depends" is often true: there are often a lot of nuances that many people don't consider. For example you would think a mutual NDA should be pretty standard, but as it turns out it can be really complex.

Public companies have to file a lot of documents with the SEC, and often contracts get disclosed. Paid services such as Bloomberg Law are essentially glorified search engines on this free public dataset.

Nobody suggesting NoLo?

https://store.nolo.com/products/online-legal-forms

Here's something related that I've been wondering about: what if the client is from another country? Let's say the company is from the Netherlands and they are selling a service to another company in the US.

Which country's law should apply? Do they get a Dutch or an American lawyer? Is the contract written in Dutch or English (or both)? In case of a legal dispute, which court do they go to? Is the invoice in dollars or euros?

CooleyGo is great: https://www.cooleygo.com/documents/

https://www.cooleygo.com/documents/

If you're in the UK, https://seedlegals.com is the place for all of this.

And, there's lots of resources and data, like this: https://seedlegals.com/termometer/

Why does a side project need a bunch of legal documentation? Actual harm must be shown before you'll find yourself in any trouble. Having a shiny cookie policy isn't really going to help you.

Focus on your project first.

Basecamp has their policies on Github under a "CC BY 4.0 DEED" license, though it looks like they've archived the repo: https://github.com/basecamp/policies

Great question! I updated my privacy policy last year and wanted to leverage more "open" policies, but found that world to be lack and instead pooled a bunch I appreciated and asked my laywer to emulate. Wasnt the cheapest approach, but Im happy-

Rocket Lawyer (www.rocketlawyer.com) is a paid service but has a really good library of legal documents you can create online, plus access to attorneys to help review your docs or answer questions.

Legal systems are code execution for people who can’t code. Use accordingly.

Do any of these resources target multiple different countries? The requirements for these kinds of documents tend to vary wildly, even between countries with similar legal traditions in the Anglosphere.

Westlaw is the industry standard but it's not free iirc.

E: nevermind this isn't a great answer for your question. Going to leave it up for informational purposes

Wilmerhale has a document generator for a lot of what you need. No need to log in, create an account etc. I use these.

You can also use one of those lawyer services you pay for monthly, inuse mine to review things like this occasionally.

You mean templates ...

In terms of a privacy policy, the UK ICO has a good starting point for UK based organisations: https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/advice-for-small-organi...

It covers the basics of GDPR compliance.

A lawyer. I would try contacting a local startup incubator to see if they have any recommendations before you start googling or looking up Avvo.

I also found Termly helpful for a first Privacy Policy especially through their wizard, which clears up all your GDPR/CCPA matters, but you want a professional to look this over at some point.

Free legal documents are worth what you pay for them.

ChatGPT can produce a pretty good ToS/privacy policy in a pinch.