Monday Morning Meeting: Signing Your Client's Contracts

Wilson Cole, President of Adams, Evens, & Ross (AER) and Samantha Cole, in-house counsel for AER, sit down to talk about signing client’s contracts. Wilson explains that signing a contract drawn up by a client company, which is more common when dealing with larger companies, is not necessarily a bad thing but in general it is something that will give them the upper hand over you (as the staffing agency). This will be expanded upon more later, but a key thing the staffing agency should do is actually read, with attention to detail, the contracts they are signing. It may seem like common sense but you would be surprised how often this simple step does is not done properly. The biggest “gotcha” in client contracts is language that says something to the effect of “if the staffing agency doesn’t present an invoice within 60 days of presentation then the invoice will not be valid.” While initially it’s understandable for client companies to want language like this to protect from vendors coming back after a long period of time and claiming they never got paid for work that never actually happened, the unintended consequence is that it gives less-honorable client companies a tool to use to prevent having to pay vendors.