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