305 - All about NDAs
On today's episode of the podcast I share the common misunderstandings about non-disclosure agreements and when you actually need one.
To learn more about NDAs, check out the Non-Disclosure Agreement section of the blog post "The Legal Essentials for Creative Small Businesses" at notavglaw.com/legal-essentials
A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) protects you and/or your client, contractor, employee, etc. from having confidential information shared. It's basically a confidentiality agreement between you and the person you're working with. Most of the time an NDA can be just one of the terms in your contract but if no contract has been signed yet and confidential information is being handed out, you may need an NDA ahead of the contract.
An example of this would be hiring a bookkeeper. Here at the Not Your Average law firm we offer bookkeeping services and to write an action plan for your bookkeeping proposal we might need to access your Quickbooks account. While we will never share your information, because your account contains personal tax information, we could send you an NDA upon your request as an extra level of confidence that we won't share your personal information. Stand alone NDAs are for when you are looking for a potential client to share confidential information to help you create your proposal.
Another example is if you are receiving confidential information to perform a service as part of a monthly subscription i.e. when you share info with us as a member of our monthly legal subscription. In this example, you do not need an NDA because there is a confidentiality clause in our terms and conditions that our clients agree to when signing up for the subscription.
That is what will apply to most people. Unless it is for a pre-contract proposal, instead of an NDA what most people need is a confidentiality clause in their client contract. If someone's hiring you and wants you to keep their info private, that can be covered inside your contract and that is covered in our Contract Club templates (notavglaw.com/club)
A third example we see is when hiring contractors. If you hire an independent contractor, to streamline onboarding the independent contractor may need info about our clients before they know what type of work is needed. Because they need to access confidential information before signing our agreement, they will need to sign a separate NDA. Contractors and employees typically have different contracts to sign and employees would get a standalone NDA as part of a collection of contracts to sign in addition to their offer letter. There is a new hire NDA for employees available in the Contract Club and we are working on adding other NDAs. If you need an NDA template, let us know in the Braden's Besties group at bradensbesties.com
Get more information about NDAs at notavglaw.com/legal-essentials
