First, a disclaimer: I'm not a legal professional. I don't even play one on TV. So any major legal decisions you make should be done with the help of an actual attorney.

You're not too small to use a contract. I realize that you might be working out of the spare room in your house. Perhaps you work from a café down the street. Or even your parents' basement. You might equate this to not being in the "big time." The reality is that if you're in business, you need to use a contract.

I did a project for a couple of friends a few years back. One of these friends I knew from a local business group to which I belonged. The other was someone that we saw on a weekly basis in another setting. Because of this background, I feel it's fair to state that these people were both friends.

These friends wanted to hire me to design a logo for a business that they were going to launch together. Now, I may have been young in my freelance career, but I still had a very clear process for how I began projects with clients. I have always required a 50% deposit on large projects, and at that time I asked for, and received, that deposit. There was no issue there.

The project itself unfolded as anyone would expect. At the end of the design process, the client gave me written approval of the work that we had completed. They had even begun to use the logo on a Facebook page, even though the project had yet to be officially wrapped up. So I did that thing that all freelancers love to do: I sent them the final invoice.

Much like a politician changing their stance on a key issue the day after election, the moment my clients received their invoice, they changed their mind. They tried to convince me that they had not approved the logo art that I had given them. They told me that they were unhappy with the work. I told them that they were lying.

Between the trail of email conversations, and their excited use of the logo on their Facebook page, it was clear that I was in the right. Thankfully, pointing these two facts out was enough to persuade them to pay the final invoice and close out the project.

I got lucky. Please don't miss that obvious conclusion. So very, very lucky.

You see, I went into this client relationship with no contract in place, and truth be told, I deserved whatever fate might have come from this situation.

I share my story with you to get across a very important point: this is not a game. You are running a business, and you're goal is to earn money. Some people out there will want to help you put the free in freelancer, and without a contract in place, you are nearly defenseless against clients like this.

Working without a contract seems like the easy path to take. Less paperwork, fewer moments of having to ask a brand new client to do something uncomfortable. Fewer opportunities for a client to get scared and bolt away before we can close the deal.

I get it. And when you're fresh to the freelancing world, and have little cash to pay for a lawyer to help you write a general contract, it's a hard pill to swallow. I know all the excuses because I've spoken them out loud myself.

The benefits of using a contract, however, greatly outweigh the costs. Below are just a few of the many ways in which requiring a contract can remove the friction from your freelance career.

Assumed Professionalism

We sign agreements almost every day. That web service you use to plan your projects has a Terms of Service agreement. The contractor who replaces your roof requires you to sign a contract. Even social organizations and business groups have agreements that all members must sign. Contracts are not new to us.

Anyone who hires a professional to perform a service expects there to be some form of contract involved. So for you to begin requiring your clients to sign a contract before beginning work, you won't actually be expecting anything more than what other service providers have required. If you have feelings of insecurity or doubt in regard to using a contract, get over them. Contracts are the norm, and they are expected.

So when we, as service providers, enter into a relationship with the client after failing to ask for a contract to be signed, it can be easy for these clients to think less of us. Using a contract allows the client to see us for who we really are: a professional.

Legal Protection for You

Besides enhancing our professional image, contracts also serve to protect us. When the project between myself and my two friends went sour, what I desired the most was a single piece of paper that I could point to and say, "See, this is what we agreed to!"

A contract that clearly states exactly what you will provide for your client, and in return what you can expect from them, goes a long way toward guaranteeing that those things are actually delivered. A client will be more cooperative if the likelihood of actually getting what they've requested depends completely upon their obedience to the terms of the agreement.

Legal Protection for the Client

We tend to think of contracts as important to ourselves as freelancers. A contract can serve as a source of protection for the client as well, though. This partially explains why clients are more likely to trust a business that uses a contract. But there's more to it than that.

Without a contract, the client has no written and legal expectation for how the project will unfold. Sure, there are client testimonials. There are even personal recommendations from business associates or friends of theirs. With nothing written out, though, there is no guarantee that what they're asking for will actually be delivered.

Contracts offer confidence to the client. It tells them that your expectations are important, but also that their own expectations are equally important. The contract makes it clear that you are serious about being paid, just as serious as you are about delivering the results that the client has asked for.

The Logistics of Using Contracts

One of the biggest reasons that freelancers resist using contracts with their clients is that it seems like quite a hassle. This is understandable, especially considering how important it is to remove the friction that exists between your client's wallet and your bank account. Requiring a contract for every client relationship seems like adding one more point of friction between you and your goal.

I've spent the last few years developing a process for handling contracts that allows for the least amount of friction, while still allowing me to enjoy all of the benefits. These suggestions are by no means the only way to handle contracts. Feel free to get creative. The steps of my process have proven to be quite successful, however.

One contract to rule them all. I know that some businesses write unique contracts for each client relationship, but I've found that using one simple contract for all clients has been the most effective for me. My contract does not get into the minutiae of the number of revisions the client has purchased or milestone due dates or listing out specific deliverables.

For the least amount of friction, consider crafting a simple contract that covers the basics that all projects would require. This way, you will have a contract that you can use no matter the scope or timeline of the project at hand. It also means that you will spend much less time writing contracts and more time doing the work that you love. Work, I might add, that pays the bills.

I also don't require a new contract for each project. My contracts are written, in a sense, to be a meta-contract that oversees the entire relationship through multiple projects. Once my client has signed a contract with me, they'll never have to do it again. This allows the client relationship to become more about the work we produce and less about signing contracts all the time.

Easy to distribute. To take as much friction out of the process as possible, it is important to make the contract easy to distribute. After writing the contract that I use in my business, I converted that document into PDF format and use a simple tool to make it available to anyone who needs it.

There's a file storage service called Dropbox that I use. They have free accounts that are worth testing as aids to your workflow. One of the features of their service is a public folder. You can place any file in that folder that you want to share, and then copy its public web address for sending to clients. That public link never changes for that file.

I use Dropbox to hold things like my contract, informational PDFs about my logo services and even tax documents that clients will need from me. And because each file in my public folder has a unique, secure web link, I can build those links into other tools I use.

For example, I combine this tool with with a text-expanding application (I use TextExpander, but there are others out there), so I can send new clients a link to my contract with literally a few keystrokes. You don't have to make it that complicated, though. It can be as simple as emailing the PDF itself.

Your goal, though, should always be the same: remove the friction that occurs when trying to place the contract into your client's hands.

Easy to collect. A contract is only useful if the client signs and returns it. After determining the best way to distribute your contract, it is important to make it as easy as possible for the client to return it to you. The more options that the client has for doing so, the less friction there is in getting the document returned.

Nearly all copies of my contract have been sent through email (as a link to the file's location in my Dropbox public folder), and so requesting that the document be signed and returned by email is a natural option. There are other ways of handling the return of the document, though. Believe it or not, some of my clients still rock the fax machine, and so my contract has a fax number on the bottom of the back page. Online services such as HelloFax.com offer people the ability to receive faxes with just a computer and an internet connection.

Another option for returning the contract that I offer my clients is so incredibly simple that it will seem obvious once I tell you: by using their cell phone camera. All my client has to do is print the contract I've sent to them, sign and date it, and then take a photo of it with their cell phone. Once they have a photo of the signed contract, more options open up to them. They can email it back, or they could also text the image to me.

When I send my contract to clients, I tell them that I'm easy to work with. I make it clear that the contract is required, of course, but I present it in a wrapper of flexibility in how the contract is handled. My clients appreciate the freedom I give them in regard to how they can handle the contract. And I still get the signed document, which helps me maintain a frictionless relationship with them.

Keep it on file. I keep all signed contracts on file. I realize that every freelancer manages their business differently, but as a designer I have a lot of digital records. On my work computers, I give each client their own folder within my general "Jobs" folder. Along with folders for each of the projects I might have worked on with a particular client, I also keep a "Legal" folder. It's in there that I store documents such as NDAs and contracts.

Whether you currently use contracts in your freelance business, or you will now that you've read this section, your priority is simple. You need to remove as much friction as possible from the process of distributing and collecting the document. Making it difficult to use your contract can add almost as much friction as not using one at all.

Building the Contract

You probably thought I was going to leave you hanging, didn't you? I've co-hosted the Home Work podcast for over two years now, and one of the most common questions we've been asked is the one you're been shouting at the page for the last few minutes: "Where do I start?"

Thankfully, I'm ready to reveal my secret recipe. Actually, it's not mine. A developer named Andrew Clarke wrote an article back in 2008 about what a contract needs to contain, and then offered up a text template for how it could be written. He has even updated the text, and moved it to GitHub so that it can be tweaked and refined by other professionals.

Go grab the text, and edit it to fit your business needs. It covers all the essential bases, and still has a great, conversational tone that will help your clients feel safe working with you. I won't say much more than that, other than to reiterate my admonitions: get a contract, put it into practice, and use it with every single client.