Services and consulting
Independent contractor agreement
The paper between a business and an individual who is running their own business rather than joining the payroll. It covers the same ground as a services agreement — scope, money, ownership, confidentiality, ending it — and adds the part that only matters here: a plain statement that the person is not an employee, supplies their own tools, decides how the work gets done, and handles their own taxes. Whether an arrangement really is self-employment is settled by local law and by what actually happens day to day, and no heading on a page changes that.
- In the catalogue
- Services and consulting
- Where it can live
- Any of the 184 governing laws
Who uses one
- Small companies engaging a developer, designer, writer or operator for a defined piece of work.
- People working for themselves who want their own paper rather than the client's.
- Anyone replacing a handshake and an invoice with something written down.
What you are deciding
- What the work is, and how it is ordered
- The rate, the invoicing rhythm, and what happens when payment is late
- Who supplies the tools and covers the costs
- Who owns the delivered work, and what the contractor keeps
- Whether the contractor may send somebody else
- What is confidential, and what happens to files at the end
- Notice on either side, and what is paid for work in progress
- Which legal system the paper names
Blanks you leave stay blank and wait in the room. Nothing is filled in from a guess.
The sections a draft usually has
- 1The parties
- 2The services
- 3Fees and invoicing
- 4Status: not an employee
- 5Taxes and own costs
- 6Ownership of the work
- 7Confidentiality
- 8Term and termination
- 9Governing law
A general outline, not a required one. What turns up in a draft follows what you described. A contract is written in the order a contract is read.
What people call it
The names this kind of paper goes by. They are here because people search for them. They also filter the catalogue. They are not a wordlist the door matches. At the composer you describe the deal in your own words instead.
- independent contractor agreement
- contractor agreement
- 1099 agreement
- self employed contract
- contract for services
- gig contract
Questions people ask
- Does calling somebody a contractor make them one?
- No. Legal systems look at how the relationship actually runs — control, substitution, tools, financial risk — rather than at the title on the paper. Ask a lawyer if the arrangement sits close to the line.
- Who owns the work a contractor produces?
- It depends on the legal system and on the paper. Many agreements of this kind assign the delivered work to the client on payment, and say plainly what the contractor keeps.
- Can a contractor send a substitute?
- Some papers allow it, some require approval, and some forbid it. The answer matters beyond convenience, because a right of substitution is one of the things used to tell contracting from employment.
General answers about the document. Not advice about your situation. Not written about any one country.
Where it lives
A contract names the legal system it is governed by. That is a separate decision from which paper it is. You pick it at the door, from any of the 184 units in Governing law, including England and Wales, Delaware, California and New York.
You do not start from this page. Describe the deal in one sentence at the door. Read the draft back in plain language, in the order a contract is read.
Start it at the door →Related kinds