The First of Many Employment Contracts
Photo credit: Library of Congress
Today we released what will hopefully be the first of many employment contracts on LexPublica. Why “many”? Because provinces and states have laws and regulations that affect how an employment contract in that particular jurisdiction needs to be written. Additionally, contracts could be customized for certain industries, positions, etc. The contract we released today is for British Columbia.
We started with BC because that’s where we’re located and it’s the jurisdiction Martin knows best. In the next couple of weeks we’ll release a generic Canadian employment agreement that can serve as a starting point for localization to other provinces and territories. When we do that, we hope Canadian employment lawyers will jump in to help localize versions for their jurisdiction.
If you’re such a lawyer, drop us a line or leave a comment and we’ll let you know when the generic text is ready. Better yet, sign up for the contributor newsletter so you’ll be the first to know about big projects like this.
Also, if you’re an American employment lawyer and you’d like to help us develop a generic U.S. employment contract template others could use to localize for different states, let us know.
This is our first big project, and we’re looking forward to working with all sorts of new people. If you know an employment lawyer, please point them this way.
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This projects is a really awesome idea, but it would be nice if the templates were annotated more for both parties to the agreement. Since it’s likely that neither party using these agreements will seek council, there should be more explanation of what is being traded.
This employment contract for example, waives all moral rights, which may be appropriate for some, but for others may go way, way, too far.
I’d also put a feature request in for a more web 2.0-ish forms approach, where the contract is built from a series of checkboxes of inclusions, with each option clearly explained. Something along the lines of how the creative commons license drafting service works.
Good luck with it guys!
Thanks for your comment, Kevin, and my apologies for taking so long to approve it and reply.
We, too, would like to be able to annotate templates, and it’s on the list of features we’ll eventually develop for the site. For now, please be sure to consult the Guidelines for each contract, as they should address some of your questions.
No contract will be appropriate for everyone or for all situations, so we hope people will consult a lawyer to edit them as needed.
We likely won’t pursue a forms approach (Creative Commons has a far simpler list of options than even just one type of contract we hope to cover would require), but I’ve made note of your feedback and we’ll see how things evolve.
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