Terms & Conditions: basic or detailed?
 

Do you keep your Terms & Conditions basic, or try to cover as many of the important aspects (i.e. of what may go right and wrong, decision making, liabilities etc etc) in your document as possible?

You could probably sum things up concisely with a few bullet points covering all parts of the production, but from a legal perspective do you consider it wise to keep the advisories basic (and 'all encompassing') or flesh them out with examples of situations that may arise that are covered in the Terms & Conditions?

I'm based in New Zealand where we don't really have a litigious culture like the USA.... yet.

No public liability insurance, basic half-page contract, commercial music all over the place. Life is good here. ;)

You lucky stiff !!!!! :-)

Robert, your Terms and Conditions and your Contract (we call ours an Agreement which sounds more informal but is the same thing) need to be able to stand up in court, even if you have no intention of ever going there.

Unless you are legally qualified, I'd strongly recommend you go to a lawyer to have them checked - by all means have a crack at the work yourself because lawyers charge by the minute. And there's no point in having Terms or contract that aren't legally sound.

Detailed. I mean, we try to keep it as short as possible, but it's far more important to make sure your business is covered and that everything is clarified for the client. I think our terms & conditions go about 3 pages currently. To be honest, it's as much to protect the client as it is to protect us.

If you join the Institute of Videography then you can use one of their standard contracts. Aside from the other benefits of joining the IoV it's probably cheaper than consulting a lawyer. IOV | Institute of Videography

quite detailed but as Travis said, it protects the client as much as it does me. I could never think of doing a job without this kind of protection. I personally know 2 people that were sued out of business because they didn't have tight,properly drawn T&Cs.