Everyone needs legal documents, but not everyone can afford to pay a law firm for custom documents. That’s why we’re showing you 19 legal document examples that you can use. Legal experts and proofreaders have reviewed these free contract templates. You must pick the one you need, customize it, and send it for online signing.
Let’s dive in!
19 Legal Document Examples With Templates
Produced by Signaturely.com, these legal document templates are free to use. Pick the one you need for your purposes and fill in the blanks to create a custom legal contract:
- Non-Disclosure Agreement Example
This non-disclosure agreement enables you to protect your data while sharing it with other parties. This is useful anytime you need to protect your intellectual property. This contract allows you to legally bind and prevent other parties from sharing disclosed sensitive information.
As a confidentiality agreement, NDAs are used across multiple industries. They are often included with an employment contract for each new hire to prevent employees from leaking data to unrelated parties.
- Work for Hire Agreement Example
This straight-forward work-for-hire agreement is a useful legal document for any work you’re receiving or providing. This agreement lists the provided services and their prices.
This simple yet elegant business contract is perfect when you need a purchase agreement for two or more parties to agree on services and their cost before these services are provided.
- Referral Agreement Example
This referral agreement template enables you to pay a commission to a third party every time they generate a sale for your business. For example, if you run a referral program with tools like ReferralCandy, this contract is ideal.
With this contract, you can agree to pay a percentage or fixed commission to another party while specifying that they are not directly working for your company.
- Property Management Agreement Example
With this property management agreement, you can quickly set up the exclusive rights of a piece of property, its entrusted agent, and the payment terms between the parties.
Real estate agents can use this legal document to manage properties and sell/rent them on behalf of their owners while specifying the fee the agent will collect in return. The contract can also empower the agent to solve disputes with tenants, inspect and maintain the property, find and screen potential tenants and buyers, and advertise the property for sale or rental.
- Agency Agreement Example
This simple agency agreement template is one of the most versatile legal documents that an agency can use.
With this template, an individual or business entity can authorize another individual or entity to act on their behalf. This individual or entity can manage contracts, sell properties, and/or provide legal representation.
- Payment Agreement Example
This precise payment agreement positions you to set up a legal contract where one party agrees to pay another a specific, one-time payment.
Like a legalized I.O.U., this payment agreement allows you to break down the payment into installments and agree on how and when the payment will be collected.
If you do not have a payment agreement, you’ll not be able to take any legal action if your debtor fails to make their repayments resulting in a bad debt expense for you
- Non-Compete Agreement Example
Through this non-compete agreement, an employer can hire an employee and prevent them from using their acquired knowledge and experience to join or otherwise aid the competition.
With the protection of this legal agreement, a business owner can train new employees and show them company secrets to improve their skills while avoiding the risk of employees using those secrets to work against the business.
Due to their vague, general, and limiting aspects, non-compete agreements are only enforceable at the discretion of your local government, which determines the reasonability of a non-compete agreement.
- Memorandum of Understanding Example
This memorandum of understanding template permits two or more parties to agree on their role and intent in a negotiation.
An M. O. U. helps when multiple parties want to agree on a common line of action. The agreement describes the line of action and what roles each party will play in it.
- Loan Agreement Example
The loan agreement is one of the most common legal documents. These agreements allow you to establish simple loan terms. The borrower presents a sworn statement of how they will repay said loan.
This template also provides space for payment breakdowns, late fees, etc. You can detail exactly how much money one party is lending to another and how that money will be repaid.
- Intellectual Property Agreement Example
This intellectual property agreement template is designed to protect an organization’s inventions.
With this template, you can outline employees’ inventions for a company and detail how these new discoveries and breakthroughs will be integrated into the business’s IP rights.
- Employment Contract Agreement Example
With this employment contract agreement, you can hire the talent you need and share their responsibilities as employees and their employee compensation. The agreement also details any working benefits and lists the potential reasons for instant employee termination.
This comprehensive contract is one of your repertoire’s most vital legal document templates.
- Rental Agreement Example
You can fill out this rental agreement template with information from the tenant, the landlord, and the rental property.
This template works as both a personal and commercial lease agreement. You can detail how and when the rent will be paid, the length of the property rental, and all termination details. The language is all written in simple, plain terms so that all parties can easily understand the clauses.
- Sublease Agreement Example
This sublease agreement enables tenants to sublet their rental property to a third party.
The document lists which parts of the property will be rented, for what duration, and the amount of rent. Remember that these contracts are only enforceable if the original tenant’s contract allows for subletting of the property.
- Sales Contract Example
This sales agreement template helps you determine the terms and conditions between buyer and seller for acquiring a good or service.
Even though these agreements are not required for every transaction, sales agreements are useful legal documents when making a substantial or long-lasting purchase agreement or when purchase records are needed.
- Retainer Agreement Example
This free retainer agreement template empowers you to have any professional on standby for your business.
The template includes spaces to add the amount and frequency of the retainer fee, the services that the party will provide, and terms for extra reimbursements. It has all you need to collaborate with the professionals or companies your business needs to prosper.
- Independent Contractor Agreement Example
With this independent contractor agreement template, you can expediently hire third-party contractors and verify their specific jobs and associated rates.
Working with independent contractors relieves you from hiring teams of experts or managing different departments. This agreement also clarifies independent contractors’ tasks and sets the terms and conditions for fulfilling the contract and rendering payment. It holds all involved parties accountable.
- Commission Agreement Example
This commission agreement template establishes a clear commission system for individuals or businesses based on how much income they generate for a business.
The template includes everything necessary to describe and enforce the commission structure and amount and the terms both parties must abide by to validate the contract.
- Service Agreement Example
This service agreement template lists provided services along with their associated rates. It also stipulates a payment schedule and terms for contract termination.
The document functions as an invoice and a legal form to document and enforce a business transaction.
- Video Release Form Example
Commonly used by filmmakers and video production houses, video release forms allow anyone to quickly grant their permission to appear on camera for commercial purposes.
This legal document is vital for anyone posting recordings in public spaces. Release forms make it easy for videographers to obtain and maintain the rights to their footage while ensuring that the film does not violate anyone’s privacy.
Importance of Legal Documents
Through legal documents, you can establish and enforce a contract without the aid or expense of a lawyer or law firm. The right legal document can protect all parties and ensure everyone understands the legal process or transaction.
With legal documents, all parties can receive their own copy of a written agreement of the process and even take them to a law expert for further examination of fairness and convenience.
Legal documents are everywhere because they are useful in a diversity of situations. Everyone needs legal documents, from a joint venture agreement between two massive corporations to a prenuptial agreement between two individuals.
How to Prepare and Execute a Legal Document
It is important to properly prepare your legal document to ensure it is legally binding and can stand up in court.
The easiest way is to verify your document is by using templates. Legal document templates enable you to fill in the information of your transaction and the parties involved quickly, setting up an air-tight legal document in just a few seconds.
Despite templates’ convenience, you should always ensure that your templates come from companies and websites that can properly provide legal advice, have experience with legal issues, or have law experts as template writers and proofreaders.
You can also create your own document from scratch, but you should ask for the help of a lawyer if you are not a law expert. Creating your documents from scratch grants you the freedom to build a completely personalized contract at a higher price. In some cases, building your own documents is necessary for a complex business agreement or a long-term partnership agreement.
Once your document is finished, you can arrange an appointment for all parties to sign it in person, or you can mail the physical document.
Another option is to digitize your document to allow all parties to sign virtually from any device.
With the online signing, you can’t acquire the legal signatures you need in a fraction of the time. Upload your document to a platform like Signaturely (or create a document with one of our templates), set up signature fields for users to add their digital signature, and add the business email of all signatories. You can even customize the order in which your signers receive the contract. If you use Signaturely, your signatories will receive an invitation to sign a digital document, guiding them from creating their digital signature to adding it to the last signature field.
Try Signaturely for free today and see if it’s a good fit.
FAQs About Legal Document Examples
Here are the answers to common questions about legal documents:
A legal document must include a few aspects. First, the document should declare its purpose, detailing its existence and intention. The document should also include all necessary information, such as facts, addresses, quotes, and other data relevant to the agreement. Lastly, every legal document should include the full names of all parties involved and any necessary information and a space for each party’s signature. Depending on the location and the document type, the document may have one or multiple signing areas for the parties.
Here are the most important legal documents that everyone should have: Will: Wills and testaments detail who inherits any and all of your possessions in the event of your passing. Power of attorney: A power of attorney enlists other individuals to execute decisions on your behalf. A healthcare power of attorney allows someone to make decisions in your name if you become too sick to make them yourself. A financial power of attorney legally empowers someone to make financial decisions and manage your assets.
A living will: With a living will, you can tell people, like family and medical professionals, what your wishes are if you are in a dying state, permanently unconscious, or in any other situation where you can no longer make decisions about your life.
Not necessarily. While a written contract is simply a document listing what each party is expected to do, not all written agreements are legally binding. For a written agreement to function as a legal document, it must show an offer and acceptance, consideration, intention, and the written signature of a valid signatory.
What You Must Remember About Legal Document Examples
There you have it. Dozens of legal document examples you can use to kickstart your business. Legal documents are not hard to make, especially when you don’t start from scratch! Check out our list of templates for all types of legal documents and sign up for Signaturely for free to send up to three signature requests and digitize your paper documents as digital contracts.
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