EP558: Sharon Toerek - Stop Setting And Forgetting: Giving Your Client Agreements A Regular Checkup

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Most of us have a client agreement that was written once, borrowed from somewhere, or generated in a hurry, and then never touched again. In this episode, attorney Sharon Toerek explains why that "set it and forget it" habit is one of the biggest gaps she sees in professional service firms, and what a practical annual checkup looks like. Her work is with marketing agencies, but the lessons carry straight over to bookkeeping and accounting practices.

Chapters

• [00:00] Why agreements need a temperature check
• [01:15] Sharon's path to founding Legal + Creative
• [04:30] Biggest blind spots in service firms
• [08:00] How often to review client agreements
• [12:00] Preparing your business model for counsel
• [16:00] Online terms versus signed engagements
• [20:00] Choosing a legal advisor in your industry
• [23:00] Niching as a business development strategy
• [26:00] Progress, not perfection, with your legals
• [28:00] Where to find Sharon

The set-and-forget problem

Sharon's biggest observation about service firm owners is that they move fast and skip the proactive work. "It's not very sexy to slow down and make sure that you've got all of your legal foundation or your process in place," she says, but not revisiting it "ends up costing you more time and money in the long run." The most common missed opportunity is the standard agreement itself, whether that's with clients, independent contractors, employees, or strategic partners. She calls a temperature check on those documents "a major opportunity gap" that is probably universal across professional service firms.

What to review in your agreements

Sharon's rule of thumb is to look at your evergreen agreements at least annually. She walks through the areas worth checking:

• Intellectual property ownership, especially if you reuse your own IP across multiple clients
• Fair competition covenants, such as clients poaching your staff or your staff poaching your clients
• Payment terms, and language that lets you recover collection costs if you have to chase unpaid fees
• Data protection, if you touch confidential or privacy-protected client data
• Liability limits that match the amount of risk you actually take on
• AI use, so clients understand how and when your firm uses it

On AI, she is blunt: if you haven't received AI-created work product from a client, "I would love to meet you, because we get them every day and we're a law firm."

Getting ready to talk to your lawyer

Before anyone drafts or refreshes your contracts, your advisor needs to understand your business model: how you charge, what your proposals look like, whether you bill by project or by the hour. Sharon asks her own clients for two or three recent proposals so she can see how they talk about, price, and scope their services. She also pushes back on the idea that shorter is better. Her view is that an agreement "should be as long as it needs to be to cover the areas of potential exposure or risk." She adds that clients are just as unlikely to be put off by 13 pages as by 3, and that every clause should have a reason your lawyer can walk you through.

Online terms versus a real engagement agreement

Michael asked whether a firm can simply post its terms online and link to them. Sharon says that can work when the terms are technically deep and lengthy, ideally with a plain-English summary alongside. For most service engagements, though, clients still use a regular contract, signed digitally. The goal is not "gotcha contracting" but an agreement both sides actually understand.

Choosing an advisor and the power of a niche

Sharon suggests asking prospective lawyers what share of their practice is in your industry, whether they are active in it, and whether they publish or speak on it. She spends her own time at the conferences her clients attend, not at lawyer events, so she knows the challenges they face. Michael points out that this is also a model for bookkeepers choosing a niche. Sharon agrees: with AI changing every profession, deep industry knowledge is how you show the human value in the relationship. A niche, in her words, "makes you better at what you do," makes business easier to find, and makes the work more enjoyable.

Progress, not perfection

For anyone who suspects their legal foundation is a mess, Sharon's advice mirrors what bookkeepers tell clients about their books. Start where you are, find an advisor who will meet you there, and don't wait. "You pay now or you pay later," she says, and paying now usually costs less than waiting for a problem to show up.

Links mentioned

• Legal + Creative (Toerek Law): legalandcreative.com
• The Innovative Agency podcast, hosted by Sharon Toerek
• Sharon Toerek on LinkedIn (T-O-E-R-E-K)
• The Successful Bookkeeper: thesuccessfulbookkeeper.com

About the guest

Sharon Toerek is the founder and owner of Toerek Law, which does business as Legal + Creative. About 13 years ago, after time at a large firm and at two entrepreneurial law firms, she started a practice serving independent marketing agencies across the US. Her firm focuses on intellectual property, contract development and negotiation, marketing law compliance, and AI governance. She also hosts The Innovative Agency podcast.

About the host

Michael Palmer

Michael Palmer is the host of The Successful Bookkeeper podcast — almost 600 episodes and counting — and founder of The Successful Bookkeeper Global. He's spent over 15 years in the bookkeeping industry, working one-on-one with thousands of bookkeepers across the globe. He started this work because of his father — a brilliant electrical contractor who worked twice as hard as he should have had to, because nobody on the financial side was in his corner. That gap is what The Successful Bookkeeper exists to close. His view: bookkeepers are the most undervalued force in small business — and every bookkeeper who builds a real business changes two families: theirs, and their clients'.