Get A Legally Legit Wedding Photography Contract From The Legal Paige

I have a question for you – when was the last time you reviewed your engagement session or wedding photography contract?!

A proper wedding photography contract should be one of the first major investments you make in your business. Even before upgrading to higher quality cameras and lenses!

Why?

Most importantly, if anything unexpected happens your contract will protect you legally. It’s also a major difference between a wedding professional and someone who is pursuing photography as a hobby.

A good wedding photography contract does a few things:

*Protects you
*Protects your client
*Sets expectations

Important Wedding Photography Contract Clauses

Of course, it’s important to note that I am NOT a lawyer. Please consult legal professionals to ensure your business is legitimately protected!

That being said, here are a few things I highly recommend you include in your wedding photography contracts:

 Usage Rights – detail exactly how your clients can use their photos after they receive them. Copyright laws vary in every country, and you never want to assume that anyone is going to know what that means.

1. Rescheduling + Cancellation Policies – so many things can be learned from what it was like during the pandemic. Having rescheduling and cancellation policies in place is one of them!

2. A Safe Working Environment Clause – as wedding photographers, we interact with all sorts of people. It’s important to protect yourself and set boundaries for what type of behaviour will and will not be tolerated. Don’t forget to also include what will happen in the event a situation occurs where you or your team are unsafe. You may never have to enforce it, but it’s so important to have just in case!

I don’t book a wedding or engagement session without a contract in place at the very beginning. It gives my client information that’s so important for our time together to be successful. That’s not a step I’m ever okay with skipping!

The templates I purchased from The Legal Paige are amazing and I can’t recommend them highly enough! It is a US-based company, but Canadian and international users can change the templates as needed. They are thorough and easy to understand which I love!

Don’t feel awkward about sending contracts when you’re first starting out! And if you’ve been at this for a while now? Don’t head into another busy season without making sure they’re up-to-date with your current policies.

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(Intro Music)

Welcome to Keeping it Candid – Wedding Photography Unfiltered for photographers who want to keep it real. I’m your host, Sandra Henderson, international wedding and family photographer and educator with a Marie Kondo-style approach to running a business – you know, keeping things simple and getting rid of anything that doesn’t bring you joy!

More importantly, I’m a strong enneagram 3w2 who is obsessed with tacos, and my love for travelling plus navigating chronic illness life are just two of the many things that drive my passion for all things systems, workflows, and beating burnout as a business owner.

Join me twice a month for a candid, behind-the-scenes look at what it’s really like working as a wedding photographer – where I’ll give you actionable steps to take your business to the next level. Absolutely no fluff here, friends! So grab your favourite notebook and pen, and let’s dive into this week’s episode.

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Hey friends! I’m back with another episode of Keeping it Candid and I know I say this every time but I really do mean it – I am SO excited to have today’s guest joining me!

No matter where you’re at in your adventure in the world of wedding photography, I strongly believe it’s never too early – or too late – to make sure your business is legally legit. And if there’s one person who can help make sure that happens, it’s Paige Griffith from The Legal Paige!

Paige is a licensed attorney who specializes in the wedding photography industry. She has an incredible shop filled with templates for everything from wedding contracts to second shooter and associate team contracts to rescheduling clauses and so much more. And even better – with a newly hired Canadian lawyer on the team, there are now Canadian contract templates available in the shop! I’m going to link some of my favourites in the Show Notes so if you’re in need of some new contracts, definitely make sure you go check that out.

I’m a long-time user of Paige’s templates and can’t tell you how much more confident I’ve felt as a business owner since I started using them. They’re well thought out, and cover anything and everything you could possibly need to make sure you and your clients are legally protected before you start this adventure of working together.

But instead of me raving about these templates for the next 30 minutes, how about we dive into this interview instead?!

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Check out some of my favourite templates in the TLP shop!

Canadian Wedding Photography Contract

Canadian Second Shooter Contract

Canadian Adventure Elopement Contract

Canadian Rescheduling + Cancellation Bundle

**NOVEMBER 21ST – 28TH – THE LEGAL PAIGE’S ANNUAL BLACK FRIDAY SALE IS HAPPENING! GET 40% OFF THE ENTIRE SHOP! USE CODE SANDRA10 TO SAVE AN ADDITIONAL $10!**

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Sandra: Hey Paige! Welcome, and thanks so much for joining me today!! I’m so excited to talk more but before we get to that, I’m going to hand this over to you if you want to introduce yourself a little bit and tell the listeners a little bit more about you.

Paige: Hi everyone! It’s so good to meet you virtually but through audio! Maybe one day we’ll meet in person. But I I love podcasts, it’s a way for me to just connect with people from afar. I know we all live in kind of this online, virtual world, and I am the owner and lead attorney behind The Legal Paige. We’re a legal education platform for online small businesses. So, the, you know, main point behind why I created this business was access to good legal education for creatives and small business owners who primarily run their business online and, you know, marketing through social media channels. I also started a wedding photography business and then blew up into like, you know, wedding and portrait photography business back in the day. I ran that for 8 years and so I was able to kind of marry my legal passions with my entrepreneur ones and I really found this void in the industry where people couldn’t really talk to a lawyer about the business they were running, you know, just like a basic small business lawyer really wouldn’t understand how they’re running their business, how they’re booking clients, what systems they’re using online, how their marketing on social media, like I said previously. So, we created all kinds of free resources for entrepreneurs like yourself. We have blogs, we have a YouTube channel, we have our own podcast – The Legal Paige Podcast, if you’re looking for like a specific legal topic and you like listening to podcasts, that’s the place to find us, as well as a free online group community on Facebook. And so people are able to ask me and my legal team, 1:1 questions there in a group environment, and my legal team and I manage that. So, that is the free education side of our business. On top of that, we also sell contract templates and legal documents. So at any point in your business journey, if you need to update your contract or add in a clause to your existing contract or you’re looking for, you know, that additional short form to add to your legal document suite or legal toolkit, I like to say, then we are here for you along the way. You- remember, entrepreneurship is a journey. It’s not a destination. Things are going to change, client things are going to come up, and you’re going to need to go back to the drawing board a little bit because I know you are your own Chief Legal Officer, right? We were all the hats and our business. And so I just want to empower you to do that in a better, you know, more educated, more knowledgeable way.

Sandra: I LOVE the way that you approach creating all these resources for entrepreneurs and small-business owners. It’s really so apparent that you’re invested in that community and not approaching it with the same mentality that you would a corporation that has hundreds of employees and is pulling in millions of dollars a year. Because like you said, they definitely have their own nuances and their own, like, ebbs and flows and different strategies that they need. And that has been very apparent in my time working with your contract templates and being a part of the community. Side note – if you guys are not in Paige’s Facebook Community, you definitely need to go join – you’ll find the link for that in my show notes. I’ve learned so much the last couple of years. I joined the community during the beginning of the pandemic, and let me tell you, having a space of other people who just understood what we were going through as business owners was huge. So thank you for creating that space and for creating these templates for entrepreneurs who are not necessarily always able to have a lawyer on retainer when they’re first starting out.

Paige: Of course, I love helping, and thank you for saying that! Such kind words. I love our community, whether that’s, you know, in the Facebook group and that’s just more business owners, you guys, it’s really nice. We ask questions, it’s very collegial, like people aren’t judgy. Everyone is very kind, we monitor it heavily so it stays that way! And it’s really the only time, like, you can ask one of them questions to me just because of, you know, attorney-client privilege and things along those lines. It was it was a way for me to like talk to everyone in a more just easy space versus you feeling like you had to pay for an attorney to get help, right. I don’t- I know we don’t all have that type of expendable income in. Like you said, we’re not corporations! Like, we don’t have legal departments, we don’t have in-house counsel. We don’t have the ability to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a legal retainer. So that’s why I do what I do, and it’s, it’s been so fun over the past, four to five years, growing The Legal Paige, and being able to reach more and more entrepreneurs each and every day.

Sandra: Oh ya I can imagine! And as someone who is based in Canada, I was so excited over the last year when you started launching Canadian templates in your store. When I was using your US law templates it just took like a little bit of tweaking with the help of a lawyer, but Canadians are definitely happy to see a little bit less work on our plate and just being able to access those templates! But speaking of – if someone purchases templates from your shop and they are making those modifications, do you recommend that those modifications be done with the help of a licensed lawyer? Or are they written in such a way that you can just input your information and they’re good to go from there?

Paige: Yeah, great question. So as a lawyer, I’m going to answer this with, it depends. So, so fun for all of you listening! First and foremost, we draft our contract templates, and with the help of a Canadian lawyer that we now have on board – she is phenomenal! She has really helped it be like a one-and-done for you, right. We want to be able to press the easy button and just get ‘em up and running for your business, like, within 20 to 30 minutes of you downloading it. So, it’s pretty simple. In terms of just going in, we handhold you through the process when you open the document, there’s memos on the sides, there’s like highlighted information in yellow. We tell you what to put there and where to put it! I always say it depends because, of course, as a lawyer, I need to disclaim, ya, there are some things I really don’t want you touching in the contract. Such as language that you don’t even know what it means because it’s in legal, speak or legalese, as we like to say in the lawyer world. If you’re confused about what it means, please don’t touch that clause because it’s in there for a reason and really, lawyers who are well-versed and experienced in contract law are the ones that should be modifying those types of clauses. And the good news is, is like I said, we hand hold you. We’re not going to tell you to modify that clause. You will see, I call them specialized clauses related to your specific unique industry, right? Like if you’re a wedding photography, the delivery and, like, edits of image clause, right, a retouching clause, an archiving clause for online galleries. Those don’t have legal speak in them. They don’t have legal terms in them. It’s just all about your business policies and on the side, and we walk you through this, we will tell you, like, modify this to your business practices. So those are the ones you absolutely can tweak yourself and as things come up, like I said, in your business, you’re going to want to tweet those certain clauses pertaining to you know, a client sticky situation that popped up or there was confusion from a client on something or you’re like, oh I should probably add in a heftier rescheduling fee because I’m getting kind of walked all over by my clients and having to reschedule 24/7. Those are all things you can modify on your own without a lawyers help. I would just caution you, the bottom part of all of our contract templates, if you have a full-length Legal Paige contract template, those are like, miscellaneous provisions or general provisions that you see in every contract, right, an entire agreement clause, a counterparts and facsimile signature clause, a severability clause, venue and jurisdiction clause – those are the clauses we do not suggest that you touch besides entering your own right, like, Province or territory or region, where things are going to occur and we’ll tell you where to put that. But you’ll know. If it’s a red flag and you’re like “oooh, I shouldn’t touch this clause!” – that’s when I would suggest that you get a lawyer. But for the most part, I really want to have people be able to be their own legal department, right. That’s the whole point behind contract templates. So we try to make it as simple as possible for you to use on your own without hiring a lawyer.

Sandra: That’s so helpful, and ya the templates really are so easy to use.. And I love that you said your contracts are always changing as you learn and grow as a business owner. I remember when I was first starting out, this is pre-TLP templates or using any sort of template for that matter, I was just kind of like winging it on my own, and my husband was always saying, like, ‘you just finished your contract and then you had a session and now you’re changing your contract again’ – but you learn and you grow and you want to make sure that you’re protected as are going forward so that you don’t run into these hurdles and roadblocks again going forward.

Paige: Yeah. I told people, you know, every year is kind of a good time line for you to do a DIY contract audit for yourself. I think during the winter season in offseason, especially for photographers in the wedding industry and event industry is a really good time to do this. Where, not only are you looking at your finances and then you’ve got to get like all that in order, you should be looking at all those back-end systems including your contracts and just being like ‘what happened this year? What questions came up? What things irked me as a service provider? Is there something I can make more clear in my contract? And we have really good resources, you guys, at TheLegalPaige.com, for you to do a DIY contract audit every single year. You know, if every year is still a little bit, a little bit, like “ah!” and your stomach is rumbling and your, your heart is beating a little bit faster, it gives you some panic – every two years is fine as well, but just don’t wait for you know, five, ten years down the road for you to be like ‘oh I should probably revise my contract’ because at that point it’s a little too late and you haven’t set some clear boundaries for upcoming clients. 

Sandra: Yeah, that’s so true. And I think, after the last couple years, small business owners as a whole, but definitely wedding photographers, are seeing more than ever how important it is to have all of those bases covered and update them frequently so that you’re not stuck in a situation where… Well, hopefully, none of us ever have to go through another pandemic again, but if we do like, that’s not the time you want to be finding out that there’s some holes in your contract.

Paige: Yeah. It’s been a, it’s been an interesting few years and I always tell people now looking back, right, we’ve had more than a couple of years, we’re at, oh my gosh, we’re almost at 2.5-3 (years) for some of you listening to this kind of at the end of 2022, but we- we kind of need to approach what has happened over the past few years as a silver lining, right? We as business owners have more laser focus on our contracts than ever before. As do your clients! And you need to remember that’s reciprocated. It’s a two-way street, your contracts, being signed by you and all parties involved. So your clients are looking at contracts and probably have a little bit more gusto for contract negotiations than they did in the past. Because they now know like, ‘oh, I need to look at these. Like, I can’t just scroll and sign on the dotted line. Like, these are important that they have impacted me over the past couple of years.’ So take that approach as well, right? Like if your clients are seriously looking at your contracts, you need to be looking at your contracts even more. Like, at least, two to three times more than your clients do.

Sandra: Yeah. Absolutely, that’s so important. Now, speaking of clauses and all the things that we’ve had to navigate over the last few years, do you think that there any clauses within any given contract that are significantly more important for wedding photographers now than they were, say, back in 2019?

Paige: Oh yeah! Okay, here’s the list, everybody! First and foremost – force majeure Clause, not a surprise I would start with that! Make sure your force majeure Clause is super clear that was the number one cause, right, that everyone was trying to invoke March, April, and May of 2020, and we were all like, “oh my gosh! What does our contract actually say in relation to a force majeure event?!” and they just weren’t super clear. And here’s the thing, like, it’s nobody’s fault. We’ve never experienced this before. And so, lawyers were going back to the drawing board and courts were trying to interpret what force moves are actually meant in the face of a pandemic. So, we live and we learn, as we do as entrepreneurs, and your force majeure Clause needs to 1) have language surrounding what a force majeure event is, K. What is an act of God? It is an unforeseeable unpredictable event that makes it impossible to perform. That is KEY. You need those words in your force majeure Clause because now covid is not unpredictable and unforeseeable, so it is not a force majeure event anymore. And then you need to explain what happens when somebody has like a force majeur situation happen to them, right, like if a hurricane comes through. We see this South all the time. We just saw it really badly in Florida, in the United States, with the hurricane that recently came through and force majeure was invoked yet again. And who is the impacted party, then your force majeure Clause just needs to explain like notice, right? If you’re impacted by a force majeure event, how, like, how do you give notice to the other party? And then this is really important – And if anything away from this episode, I would hope you take this – at the end of your force majeure Clause, this was not in any contract prior to the pandemic – What happens with fees paid?! What happens to the contract? Like okay, you can terminate, that’s what a force majeure Clause says. It’s like it’s not a breach of contract if something like this impacts of party from non-performance. But then what? Okay, so they don’t perform. Is the contract ripped up? Is it void? What happens to fees paid? And I always say fees paid stay on credit and then they can be utilized in a certain amount of time, post-force majeure event. So it’s like, you’re pressing pause on the current contract, you’re keeping fees paid, you’re allowing the parties to not perform. It’s no big deal, right? It’s not a breach, but we are going to resume performance at a later date. So the force majeure Clause, absolutely number one.

Second, a couple clauses, I’m just going to briefly go through these ‘cause I could obviously go down the rabbit hole here, but Cancellation and rescheduling clauses – you guys, make those really clear. I want you to have a cancellation by client Claus. I want you to have a rescheduling by client Claus. So those are voluntary reschedules or cancellations on your clients part, and then a separate Clause when you need to cancel as the service provider – and that needs to be really clear as well. Like, what circumstances would arise whereby you have to kind of back out, or change your performance under the contract. And all of those we have in all of our full-length contracts and we have a la carte clauses as well. If you guys are listening to me and you’re like, “oh, gosh, I need to beef up that clause,” don’t worry, we have a la carte clauses. You can copy and paste them into your existing contract.

The very, very final one that I just wanted to quickly touch on Is – people are like do I still need to cover the clause in my contract? Well, I don’t want you to have a covid cause that’s like “here’s covid, if it happens, like, this is what we’re going to do. I actually want you to have like a no-holds bar Claus related to covid scenarios. And I call it an acknowledgement of covid clause, and no rescheduling. We all remember we were like, kind of trying to help our clients through the process, give them endless rescheduling and cancellations and we were just trying to like help, right? We were trying to help. Everyone is trying to help everyone. We’re all in the same boat at the same time. But now, like I said with force majeure, and these go hand in hand. If covid isn’t force majeure event anymore, but it’s still happening each and every day and it’s still something we need to be mindful of, and your clients are going to have questions about, right? Like what happens if I contract covid? Or what happens if you contract covid, you know? Usually you probably don’t want to go out and about and there’s a mandatory quarantine still in place if you contract it, maybe not for like close contacts anymore. But if you do, like, you can’t perform. You shouldn’t perform, right? Just for health reasons. So is that happens and if an acknowledgement of covid really means, like, what are your business policies surrounding reschedules and cancellations and so on and so forth. It’s a – it’s essentially like an assumption of risk clause, is what I tell people. It’s, it’s in relation to covid, but it’s saying like your clients assume the risk of planning this service with you in the middle of a pandemic and they know that you can contract covid or they could be a close contact or things are going to happen. And in those scenarios they don’t get to just have a complimentary reschedule, right? Like they have put themselves in a position where they may get covid and if they do that that’s not- that shouldn’t be on you. Your business shouldn’t bear that burden. Of course, if you get covid you need to like, right, reschedule do everything you can possible to serve these clients well. But, yeah, those are those are like the big five clauses. I know I went through them really fast but make sure those are in your contract. I would say most people have those pretty well fleshed out in their contracts nowadays.

Sandra: Oh my gosh, that was so helpful. I hope that everyone listening is taking notes, I know I was the whole time that page was talking! If you weren’t then give this episode another run-through and make sure you write all those down because that was absolute gold. That will be so helpful, especially as a wedding photographers are heading into engagement season and getting ready for next year’s wedding season, it’s so important to have all of that in there.

So maybe I should have asked this question before we got started talking about different causes and things like that, but when I connect with photographers who are in their first couple of years of business or in the industry, I hear a lot of people say things like, “you know, I’m just doing this part-time, I’m not professional, I’m still new. I don’t need a contract yet.” and I would love to hear from a lawyer’s perspective, how you feel about that, and what your thoughts are on people saying things like, they don’t need a contract.

Paige: Yeah, I mean, I think you need a contract, like, the minute you start anything. If there’s any exchange of like funds whatsoever, you have liability and risk attached to that, and people are going to be more concerned if something bad were to happen or something to displease them, right? Or Services weren’t rendered up to their standard because they exchanged money with you. So absolutely, if you’re doing anything, I don’t care if it’s a $50 session, I don’t care if it’s a, you know, $5,000 wedding – you have to have a contract in place. I also say for, like, family and friends – even then you need a contract. Honestly, even more, because they are going to ask you to bend over backwards for them, and like, really try to like, lots of times like milk you because there wasn’t a contract in place. Like they’re like, oh well, they’re my friend or they’re my family and they’ll do above and beyond what they do Normally for clients because it’s me. So setting those boundaries. Contracts are all about setting boundaries. Don’t put yourself in a position where you never had any boundaries and then you have nothing to fall back on or like have a leg to stand on so to speak.

In terms of your, you know, the the only thing that I would differentiate here, is like a wedding and an event if your wedding photographer listening, there is 1) Higher emotions involved in that, 2) a lot of vendors involved in that, and 3) lot of money involved in that. And with that means you need a bigger contract to protect yourself. So if you just have like a one pager document as a wedding photographer, I can guarantee legally that’s not going to cut it. So you know, do your due diligence. I always, I always want to press upon people that contracts are even more important than your website and your Instagram account, like, way more important! And I know the other things are shiny and they’re important for marketing reasons, but your marketing means nothing if your business is gone and you didn’t have a contract in place to protect you from the get-go. So I would just say it’s an essential business overhead investment that you need to make and the beauty of it is, is it gives back time and time again for years and years to come when you get a sold contract in place from the beginning.

Sandra: Absolutely. I could not agree with you more! I think to a certain extent, it’s more important to have proper contracts and just be legally protected than it is to have the best camera gear that’s out there. You can learn how to use camera gear that’s a few years old to the best of its ability and still deliver an amazing product, but like you said, if your business is falling apart then that camera, and having the best gear on the market, doesn’t really mean anything. If you’re having to constantly put out fires and having people threaten legal action and things like that, that’s where your energy ends up being focused instead of doing things you actually love doing. There are just there’s so many reasons why making your business legally legit and having those contracts from the very beginning is so so important. 

Paige: Yeah. I mean, if your photographer listening and you’re looking at that next shiny, like, 85 Mm 1.2 L Series lens K, and you’re like, I really need this. It’s going to up-level my, you know, portrait sessions. Okay. But what if you only actually took that lens out of the bag for very specific portrait sessions? And, you know, you’re still married to your 35 or 50, right? Or 24-70? Y’all know what I’m talking about here! We’re all photographers! I – you know, maybe you don’t use that for every session, but guess what? It cost you probably five times more than a contract, and your contract you use for every session because to book The Client, they have to sign the contract! So just think about it in terms of like, what you’re going to utilize most of our business overhead. What’s going to benefit you the most? Yes those things are great, right? It might up level your photography a little bit. It’s going to give you a little bit more bokeh and like that, that really yummy background. It’s going to be awesome! I love my 85! But at the end of the day, if I were deciding between that purchase and an upgraded, awesome contract, I would hands down, suggest you go with the contract, because you’re probably actually going to book better clients with your contract and then you can increase your pricing and boom – I’ve got you your 85mm in a couple of months.

Sandra: I was just going to say that I know for me when I started using more robust and professional contracts, it made me a more confident business owner in every situation. Whether it be at handling something with a client, a good, or bad situation, but also like you said, raising my prices having that just legal protection behind me and made me feel like I was totally protected and heading in the right direction.

Paige: Yeah, a little story for you guys here. It’s one of my favourites to tell. I once had someone who used our contract templates and they were a wedding photographer. It was like more of a high-end wedding. They were in a bid scenario with the big wedding planner that was doing this big wedding. It was, you know, a high-level person’s wedding and in their, you know, they have to send over contracts and planner in these people’s legal agents are reviewing contracts and they came back and told me that they won the bid because they had the most professional, robust contract where not only were they protected, but their clients were protected as well. So they booked like a $10,000- $15,000 wedding above the other, you know, colleagues that we’re submitting bids for this particular wedding because of their good contract. So I know there’s some misnomers out there in the industry that’s like, ‘oh long contracts are like off-putting to clients’ and that is Not the case. It is literally clearly the opposite. Clients are going to thank you for having a very easy to read contract that really covers every scenario possible and is also two-sided, right. It needs to protect you, I always say it’s your contract, so it should be protecting you a bit more. But if you have rights, role,s and responsibilities for your clients under the contract, too, there going to be like I want a book with this person, they know what they’re doing and you’re saying that standard right. Your reputation with working with them from the beginning, they’re going to be like ‘I expect this level of professionalism from this particular wedding vendor and I know I’m going to get it because they’re showing it to me from the beginning.’

Sandra: So after this after listening to this episode, what is one simple take away that wedding photographers could do tomorrow to make sure that their businesses are legally legit?

Paige: Okay, I’m going to have you do a little DIY contract audit with me. Kay? So write down these three things. The first thing I want you to do is get out your contract and like, print it out. Don’t just look at it on a screen K, do that for me, step one.

Step two – We’re going to read through our contract, kay?! We’re going to look for sentences or language that’s confusing. If it’s confusing to you, I can doubley guarantee it’s confusing to your clients, and clear that up, kay. Is there an easier way you can phrase that sentence? Take out a few words plain language in English, it doesn’t need- the more confusing a contract is, it’s not better, it’s WAY worse. So make it clear and precise and to the point and then number three, I want you to organize your contract a little bit better. So I want you to put the most important Clauses at the top and just you can rearrange things. It’s totally fine. Like the arrangement of contracts actually doesn’t really matter, except for when I’m telling you, right now. Important causes need to go towards the top because when we live in and online world and we’re sending contacts to people online, they are more… They’re, they’re looking at causes more in-depth at the beginning of a contract, and then they start scrolling more quickly to the end to sign. So I want you to have like your fee and retainer clause, your cancellation and rescheduling clauses, clauses related to your specific services and business policies – all ll near the top, k, those specific Clauses related to your business and then of course you’re going to get into like intellectual property and like boilerplate language clauses at the bottom.

Organize it for most important to like, what you expect in a contract. I don’t call them least important because they are still important Clauses at the bottom, but it’s like more expectant clauses at the bottom that your clients have seen many many, many times and they know what they, you know, entail at the bottom.

And then the last thing is, once you organize all of those, this is also in step 3. I want you to number your causes, in order sequentially. And then I want you to bold an underline all of the headings. This makes it really clear to your clients, if they need to go back to the contract and look at, okay, what happens if I need to voluntarily cancel? They can look for that clause heading and they know what your business policy is without having to, like, decipher through three pages of like, you know, 400 to 500 words per page. Like they don’t know where your business policy is if you haven’t organized it for them to easily understand. And it also allows you to easily point to a clause, like, well, you know, if you do want additional edits you can see clause 12 where you agreed to this as my additional editing fee for those additional revisions right after/during the post processing with photographer. So that’s what I would suggest. That is a really good like, step-by-step approach to be more legally Legit by the end of this podcast episode. I mean, that’s going to take you a little bit of time, give yourself an hour or two, but that’s my, my best suggestion moving forward. And you just going to head into next year, feeling way more protected and also knowledgeable about what your contract says, ‘cause you’ve actually read it!

Sandra: Ok, that was amazing!! I have officially added a contract audit to my to-do list for off-season. And if you were just listening to that homework that Paige gave you and you are thinking,my contracts need some HELP, you can take things one step further, make it even easier for yourself and head over to Paige’s shop because she has a sale coming up for Black Friday! Paige, I’m going to let you tell the listeners a little bit more about that.

Paige: Yeah, so I can just press the easy button for you and you don’t have to do any of that, which is nice! And you can purchase and like, uplevel your contract with us. So, over Black Friday week, we are having one of our biggest sales of the year. The entire contract job will be 40% off, and there’s no code needed. You can just go there and grab all of the legal goodies that you need to add to your legal tool kit. Again, if you have a Contract and you’re like ‘man, there’s a lot of things I’m missing in it.’ Now would be the time just to get it done for you, instead of you having to like copy and paste clauses into your existing contact. You can just have one that has all of these in there for you and it’s written by myself in my legal team here in the United States or a Canadian lawyer as well that we now have on the team. As well as I know, you are a very valuable affiliate for TLP, and so you guys, I do know that she is going to share her additional discount with you all and she’ll be offering that over our sale week as well. So it’s like a double win for you, you get discounts on the shop and then you can get an additional amount off your total purchase.

Sandra: Yeah, definitely. Make sure you check out the show notes for some links and hint-hint, there maaayyy even be an extra little discount waiting for you there that you can use during the sale! I’ll also be sharing all the things on Instagram and things like that as well. And, like Paige mentioned, they have a Canadian lawyer on the team, so it definitely make sure you pop into the shop and check out the Canadian templates and just get started on the right foot for 2023 as you head into your next busy season.

Paige: Yeah, we cannot wait to get you a legally legit you guys, and again, if you have any Questions related to, “Hey Paige, this is what I’m looking for” or you know, “I’ve had this scenario pop up,” I can point you in the right direction of a document you need or what contract you need, or what Clause you need, I am here to help you. So please feel free to reach out to me. You can do it on Instagram, you can do it through your email. We are here to help. That is what I am in this business for and want to do for you heading into, you know, the year that’s to come. I cannot wait to see what you do with your business.

Sandra: And there’s always people in your Facebook group as well that are always happy to recommend different Clauses and purchases in the shop and things like that. So that’s always another great option as well. I am all about online communities and I know some people are over Facebook, but I love a good Facebook community. So I’m always here to recommend that to you.

Paige: Yeah. I hope you guys join! Again, it’s The Legal Paige Community on Facebook, super simple. Type it into the search bar, you answer a couple questions, we just got to make sure you’re actually a business owner and then you can just sit in and social listen and, you know, see what people are asking and then when you have a question, you can pop it in there.

Sandra: Yeah, it’s so awesome. And speaking of social media, where else can everybody find you?

Ya, I’m The Legal Paige, P-A-I-G-E, it’s a play on words, that’s my business name on social media, Twitter, Instagram, we have a YouTube channel as well, and then thelegalpaige.com so it’s pretty easy to find me.

Sandra: Awesome – everyone, go give her a follow. Her content is packed with legal advice and the most relatable Reels around haha. Well thank you so much again for joining me, Paige. This was an amazing conversation. I am so excited for the listeners to go and make themselves more legally protected for their next wedding season!

Paige: Thanks guys.

Sandra: I was honestly taking notes during that whole interview because even though I use Paige’s templates for my contracts, I think it’s so important to thoroughly understand every clause – why it’s so important, what it all means, so I hope no matter what your contract situation is in your business, you found something to take away from today’s episode!

The Legal Paige’s annual Black Friday sale is kicking off on Monday where you’ll get 40% off her entire shop all week long – and, if you pop over to the Show Notes, you’ll find a little something extra to go along with it!

If you happen to catch this episode after the Black Friday sale has ended, get on Paige’s email list and join her Facebook community so you can stay up to date on future sales!

Before I go – next week I’ve got a special series coming to the podcast! The Local Vendor Series is a five-part series showcasing some of the top wedding vendors in the London, Ontario area. They joined me to talk about the importance of creating a ‘dream team’ environment with vendors on wedding day and how wedding photographers can serve our industry colleagues to strengthen those relationships. This was one of the first ideas I had when I started brainstorming for this podcast at the beginning of the year and I couldn’t be happier with how it call came together!

The first episode drops on November 21st!

(Outro Music)

Thanks so much for listening to Keeping It Candid: Wedding Photography Unfiltered with Sandra Henderson! You can find full show notes from today’s episode at simplysandrayvonne.ca/keepingitcandid. In the meantime – let’s connect! You can find me on Instagram @simplysandrayvonne, and on Facebook in the Wedding Photography Unfiltered community! If you’re loving this podcast, I’d be so honoured if you’d go ahead and hit that subscribe button and leave me a review!

Until next time!

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Check out some of my favourite templates in the TLP shop!

Canadian Wedding Photography Contract

Canadian Second Shooter Contract

Canadian Adventure Elopement Contract

Canadian Rescheduling + Cancellation Bundle

**NOVEMBER 21ST – 28TH – THE LEGAL PAIGE’S ANNUAL BLACK FRIDAY SALE IS HAPPENING! GET 40% OFF THE ENTIRE SHOP! USE CODE SANDRA10 TO SAVE AN ADDITIONAL $10!**

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About Paige

Paige is a lawyer, business consultant, photographer, and entrepreneur. Her company, The Legal Paige can help set you up for success as a business owner through contract templates and educational resources! It’s her mission to empower small business owners to feel confident and protected in their businesses.

Paige Griffith from The Legal Paige

Website |  https://www.thelegalpaige.com/
IG | @thelegalpaige
YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ6POiCTWgnStvuVdUY_XZg

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