Your Business Changed. Did Your Agreements?
You got your client agreement from a friend who runs a similar business. Or you found one online and swapped in your business name. Or an AI tool drafted it and it looked so clean you didn't think twice.
Then your business kept going. You raised your rates. You added an offer. A client asked what happens if they cancel, and you answered on the spot because the agreement didn't say.
The document stayed exactly where you left it.
That's normal, and I can say so from experience, because it happened to my own engagement letter.
My Client Engagement Letter
A few months ago I saw a post on Threads from a solo attorney who also runs her firm on flat fees and subscriptions. She mentioned added language to her client engagement letter about her firm not accepting unscheduled calls. The rationale? Requiring scheduled paid calls maximizes operational efficiency, protects the lawyer’s deep-focus time, and ensures clear client alignment.
Unscheduled calls often bypass the boundaries of a subscription tier or flat-fee agreement. Clients frequently call with queries they believe are short, which actually require complex legal analysis or fall outside the predefined scope of work.
Additionally, solo attorneys wear every hat in their firm, from lead counsel to administrator. Unscheduled interruptions destroy the deep focus needed to draft contracts, analyze regulations, or prepare for client meetings. Forcing all communications into scheduled slots creates dedicated blocks of uninterrupted time to actually complete client deliverables.
As I was reading her post, I realized that while I didn’t take unscheduled calls, there was nothing in my client agreement that explicitly said all calls needed to be scheduled. So I decided in that moment when I stopped scrolling to read her post that I needed to be clear that all calls needed to be scheduled. Now I have language in my client engagement letter that says exactly that.
In early 2025, I added trademarks as a service offering so I updated my client engagement letter to include language that was necessary for that new service line. In the fall of 2025, when I started leveraging AI tools as a resource, I updated my client engagement letter again to add language about how my firm uses AI, and earlier this year when I started receiving more AI-generated documents from clients, I added language around pricing on AI-generated documents that clients send me to work from.
Multiple updates based upon different changes in my business because I knew that as my business changed, and the client engagement letter needed to keep pace.
“That’s not in the handbook”
A studio owner came to me recently with an employee handbook she hadn’t touched since 2021. An employee had posted a client’s progress photo on her personal account. The owner told her she couldn’t do that. The employee’s answer: “That’s not in the handbook. There’s nothing that says I can’t.”
And the employee was right. The owner had an unofficial rule she assumed everyone understood given the nature of the business. But her assumption didn’t overrule the employee handbook. The employee handbook, which is the go-to source for what employees can and cannot do, never mentioned it.
As a result of this realization, the owner decided that the employee handbook needed to be updated to address social media posts. She also realized that since the handbook hadn’t been looked at since 2021, updates around PTO and the dress code needed to be made. But what she didn’t realize was that the handbook was outdated in terms of recent changes in the law since 2021.
The handbook had not kept up with the business OR the law.
The List
Another business owner emailed me recently saying she wants to make updates on her client agreement around how she uses AI in her work, what happens with refunds, and what happens when a client cancels. Three things her business already runs into that her agreement says nothing about yet.
Most of the small business owners already know there are a few things in their agreements that need to be updated. The “updates that need to be made” list lives in their heads but the review lives on the “I’ll get to it eventually” pile.
Why October Is a Good Time to Update
You know what your year actually looked like by now. The offers that sold. The clients who pushed back. The questions you answered from memory because the agreement had nothing to say. Your agreement hasn’t be updated to reflect your business changes, and if you don’t make the updates now, that “updates that need to be made” list will carry into 2027.
What If I’m Not 100% Sure What to Update
If you’re not sure where your agreement stands, use The Unread Contract Eye-Opener checklist to help you. Pull out the client services agreement you’re actually sending to clients and check it against ten provisions, including scope of services, payment terms and late fees, and AI usage. Some of what you find may surprise you.
“I Don’t Have the Time” – Let me Take the Review Off Your Plate!
If the checklist shows areas that need updating, or you already know what you want to update but you’re overwhelmed with other end of year priorities, then hand the client agreement over to me and I’ll move the review and update from the “I’ll get to it eventually” pile to the “It’s done!” pile. The Unread Contract Reckoning is how I take it off your plate. You send me your “hand-me down”, Googled, or AI-generated client services agreement that has never been reviewed by an attorney, and within seven business days, you get my review and a Loom walkthrough of what needs to be updated and my recommended changes.
What’s one update you know you want to make to your client agreement but haven’t done it yet? Tell me in the comments.
I’ve got you,
Mel
MDG Law Virtual, LLC
Making you unstoppable despite uncertainty.
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