Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

Do I need a lawyer to write this?

[SIRokai]

One of my collegues told me to get a lawyer to write the contents of the above 2 pages... I never asked a lawyer to write something like this... should I?

Your thoughts?
J

[jim_w]

As for a Privacy Policy, I started with [privacy.bcentral.com...] and modified it as I needed, but that appears to be offline. The page gives you a link to [truste.org...] I guess it depends on how much you want to invest in it, your content and typical visitors should dictate that.

[edited by: engine at 9:58 am (utc) on Jan. 13, 2004]
[edit reason] fixed broken link [/edit]

[hannamyluv]

Look at a few others. Write it based on theirs. Lawyers ar not needed for this. It's not a legal doc. You are just letting your customer know what your terms are and how you handle privacy. If you are worried, have a lawyer look at it after you write it. Much less expensive.

[SIRokai]

thanks guys... that's what I thought.

thanks for the link

J

[mgream]

Just a note that your ToS and PP are in fact legal documents as (if set up correctly) they establish a binding contractual agreement between the user and your website. If you want proof of this, there are numerous cases where the judgements have turned on the particular wordings of these artifacts.

[PCInk]

If you get a laywer to do this, it is likely that you will miss parts out.

[edited by: rogerd at 12:14 pm (utc) on Jan. 14, 2004]
[edit reason] Edited to comply with TOS [/edit]

[mgream]

Perhaps the approach it is to:

(a) look at other ToS/PP out there, understand the nature of your own site, etc, and develop a draft ToS/PP that covers it all;

(b) have your lawyer review and comment (rather than write from scratch) the draft ToS/PP to pick up anything that you have left out and to make sure that it is correct from a legal perspective (because, you are providing the technical perspective/expertise, which usually the lawyer does not have);

That is probably sufficient. Certainly I created my own ToS/PP in this way, but not vetted by a lawyer (since I am a IP specialist in training myself ...).

When your site becomes high volume and high economic worth, then you can revisit and amend the ToS/PP in a more costly way (hire a full time in house legal expert).

Specifically, I have seen these problematic areas with ToS/PP if one has not been constructed:

(a) in the case of ecommerce sites, what happens as a result of pricing errors;
(b) in the case of user contribution sites, the license for content submitted by users;
(c) in the case of user participation sites, the general rights to terminate access, etc;