Posts Tagged ‘Legal Disclaimers’

How Can I Get Legal Forms for My Website?

If you run a website on the internet, you really must include legal disclaimers. Legal Disclaimers can protect you from many kinds of legal problems that greedy or disgruntled users of the site could cause. Furthermore if you are running a US based website, or a website that deals with US businesses and customers you need to follow guidelines laid down by various federal agencies.

The important question of course though is, “Where can I get legal forms for my website?”. You may be tempted to simply copy a legal form from another website, but this could be a terrible idea. Legal disclosures on websites are often produced by lawyers and are used under license, and thus protected by copyright law. If you are found to have infringed a lawyers copyright it could end up costing you a lot of money! So if we ignore this option, there are three other common choices. You could hire an attorney of your own to produce your legal forms, you could use a legal form generator, or you could use one of thousands of pre-prepared free online legal forms. You should weigh each option up against the other and decide which is best for your particular website.

(1) You could hire an attorney specializing in internet law and have him draft up some legal forms for your website. This is of course a very expensive endeavor and only recommended if you are running a “serious” website making “serious” money. For 99% of webmasters using a legal form generator or a using free online legal forms will be a more sensible option. You can get perfectly good legal disclosures at a fraction of the cost of hiring a lawyer.

(2) You could use free legal forms which you can find online. There are a myriad of websites which offer free legal documents which may be suitable for your site. This is certainly a cost effective method of acquiring valid legal disclosures for your website, but please make sure that the legal forms you use are correct for YOUR site.

(3) You could use a legal form generator. If you do not know what this is exactly, it is a computer program into which you input the details of your website and business. The program will then automatically generates a series of legal forms for your website. This can be a good solution if you are a webmaster and have several or a lot of sites you wish to produce legal forms for. If you are using a reputable form generator you can be sure that the templates will have been produced by a lawyer and will be suitable for a wide range of websites.

As we have seen it is incredibly important for you to provide legal disclosures on your website and you need to make sure that the forms you do use are appropriate for your site. It is recommended that you first decide how many different websites you are going to need legal forms for, and then select the best option for your situation from the three above. Remember, do not try and ‘borrow’ your online legal forms from someone else’s website – it could get you in trouble!

Where and When do I need Legal Disclosures?

Since the early days of the internet it has always been prudent to include legal disclaimers on your website in the form of a Terms of Service Policy and a Privacy Policy in order to protect your business from legal action. With the introduction of the new FTC guidelines, to come into effect on December 1 2009, it is now imperative that internet business owners include an affiliate disclosure agreement on their website as well.

But website owners, especially those involved in online business, do not just operate websites. Most website owners also distribute information in other forms including, but not limited to reports which can be either free or paid and series of auto responder emails. It is important that you protect yourself from legal action which may be taken against you if you distribute information in these ways. You may worry that legal disclaimers will make your information seem less authoritative and consequently decrease sales, but when you weigh this against the possibility of having to deal with expensive legal bills you will realize that it is an easy choice to make. Legal disclaimers are vital.

As a general rule, you should bear in mind that you do not know who is going to be reading your information. There are all kinds of people on the internet who vary across the whole spectrum of different codes of morality, of intelligence and of simple “common sense”. In the offline world there have been countless numbers of cases of businesses being sued, or having other legal action taken against them for what, on the face of it, seem the most bizarre, unjustified or unworthy reasons. Even when businesses win these cases they often end up spending a lot of money in the process. The same problems can occur just as easily online as they do offline, so anyone who owns a business or even just offers information on the internet really needs to protect themselves.

No matter what manner you are distributing information on the internet, please use legal disclaimers to protect yourself. Whether it be a website, a report, or an email responder series please include legal disclaimers to protect you and your business. Some information you may wish to include is as follows:

- The information presented is for general information purposes
- You do not guarantee the accuracy, applicability, fitness or completeness of the   information
- The information should not be considered a substitute for professional advice.
- That you hold no liability for what the user of the information does with the information or the consequences of any such action.
- All links are for information purposes only and are not warranted for accuracy, content or any implied or implicit purpose
-That if any legal proceedings are commenced they will take place in your locale, not that of the plaintiff.

In conclusion, be smart and protect yourself and your business. It is your livelihood and you should not take risks by eschewing legal disclaimers in the fear that they may discourage potential sales; the loss of a few sales would pale in comparison to fighting a legal battle against a disgruntled or greedy customer who wants more than just a refund. Whether you run a website, distribute a report, offer information in the form of an email responder series or deliver information in any other way always use legal disclaimers.