Covering all of your bases?

When you need to cover yourself legally.

[ke1th]

I am currently putting together a custom e-commerce site which will require its own custom terms and conditions and other legal documentation. I have to admit I am somewhat new to this side of things and would like to ask the members here about their own experiences relating to their own site(s).

Do you just use filler T&C or have you opted to create your own either yourselves or through the counsel of a professional?

Any links or advice here would be very much appreciated.

[ke1th]

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

[Syzygy]

Professional legal counsel is essential in a matter such as this.

Syzygy

[Demaestro]

There are "canned" documents that you can find on the net. And most will be good enough for what you need....

However the above advise is the best. Legal council is always the safe bet, even if it is just an hour of their time to review your canned documents to make sure they hold water.

You don't necessarily need to re-invent the wheel here, but depending on where you are, or even more importantly where the physical server location is, there may be special laws that you are not aware of that a canned document may not address, or it may even violate laws that exists only where your server is.

Be safe and find someone knowledgeable about the specifics of e-commerce in the area applicable.

[rogerd]

We can't offer legal advice here. Certainly, the best approach is to consult with an attorney. You could certainly use a well-done T&C document prepared by some other attorney as a guide to doing your own, but there's some degree of risk in doing that. One approach that I have taken is to develop my own and then let my attorney review it and make any changes that might be necessary. This will minimize the billable hours in many cases. If your lawyer has his own boilerplate, though, just letting him crank out the document from scratch might be faster.