3 Open Source Agreement Templates To Help You Draft Legal Fashion Documents For Partnerships and Contracts

Having the right documents in place from the start of your fashion business is important. It helps you avoid any legal issues that might arise in future. These documents generally guide your business dealings and protect you from having problems with the authorities in future.

While these documents are important, not every startup fashion entrepreneur can afford to hire a lawyer to draft them for their business. To assist startup founders to draw up these documents, other organisations have provided their legal documents as open-source agreement templates. This makes the process of drawing up legal documents much easier. Here are some templates that can help you draft your fashion business’ legal documents, but first, what is an open-source agreement?

Check out our post on How To Avoid These 5 Legal Problems of Entrepreneurship As A Fashion Entrepreneur in Nigeria to find out more about these documents.

What is an Open-Source Agreement?

Open-source agreements, in a nutshell, are agreements that comply with the open-source definition. Such agreements are those that can be used freely, modified, and shared with others under specified terms and conditions. This means that anyone can take these agreements or legal documents and modify them to suit their needs. Using these documents is legal and usually comes free of charge.

For you as a fashion entrepreneur, there are many open-source legal documents that you can use to run your fashion business. They especially come in handy when you cannot yet afford a lawyer to draft all your legal documents for you.

While these documents contain most of the important clauses you need, you have to ensure to tailor them to your specific fashion business needs. They are, after all, just templates to help guide you on what needs to be in your legally binding documents. From them, you can draw up strong legal documents to run your business with before you get a lawyer.

Open-Source Agreement Templates to Draft Important Fashion Law Documents From

Founders Agreement Template

The founders agreement is an important document that outlines the relationship between founders. This document is critical as the founders are the most important stakeholders of a startup. The agreement should clearly state what each partner’s stake is in the business and what each person’s duties are. 

To help you draft your fashion business’ founders agreement, you can try out Docracy’s template or check out this template by the University of Pennsylvania Law School’s Entrepreneurship
Legal Clinic.

Employment Contract

This is a formal agreement between you and your employees or consultants. It should clearly state all the important policies of your fashion business and what you expect of them. Here, it is a good idea to outline who owns the intellectual property your employees create. This helps prevent future misunderstandings between you.

To draft your fashion business’ employment contract, check out Jotform’s template.

Non-Disclosure Agreements

A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is a legal document you should use when sharing sensitive information with someone else. It ensures that this person or organisation does not share your information with third parties. They are often used to protect confidential information and trade secrets and can last indefinitely.

A good NDA should state why you are sharing confidential information without specifying the confidential information itself. They can be used for partners, employees, manufacturers, contractors, investors and even marketing and PR firms.

You can use this open-source agreement template for NDAs by NonDisclosureAgreement.com for your fashion business needs. Also, you can check out this NDA template by LegalTemplates.

You can also create customised legal documents for your startup by answering questions using Avodocs. Also, check out this open-source licensing agreement for Michael Kors Limited, a world-famous designer of women’s and men’s apparel and accessories.

Other Important Legal Documents

Asides from the founders agreement, employee contract and NDA, here are other important legal documents to have;

1. Business Plan.
2. Certificate of registration/incorporation.
3. Shareholders agreement.

Using the wealth of resources you find online, you can also create legal documents tailored to your fashion brand for free. Take advantage of them. Also, remember to always tailor your contracts to your fashion business needs.