Small Print is a free newsletter on contract clauses, commercial risk, and the words to push back with, written for freelancers, founders, and small business owners, anchored in English law, by a GC who has spent two decades on the other side of the desk.
If you are a freelancer, a founder, a small business owner, or anyone who has been emailed a 14-page PDF and felt your stomach drop, this is for you.
Every issue takes one clause, one risk, or one piece of contract language and breaks it down in plain English. What it means. Why it matters commercially. The exact words to push back with. What a fair version looks like.
No legal jargon. No vague disclaimers. No “you may wish to consult a lawyer.”
Who writes it
I am Louise. I currently run a global legal and compliance function as a Senior Vice President and General Counsel for a global research and consultancy firm specialising in data, analytics, and insights for the energy, natural resources, and related industries.
In the last fifteen years I have read, drafted, and negotiated thousands of commercial contracts, at every value point from £500 freelance agreements to nine-figure enterprise deals.
I have also seen, repeatedly, what happens when the person on the other side of those contracts is not a lawyer. They sign things they should not have signed. They miss clauses that cost them money. They lose work, leverage, IP, and sometimes their entire business, to language they did not understand at the moment of signing.
Small Print is the publication I wish those people had been reading first.
What it actually contains
One in-depth piece on the first Wednesday of each month. Each one covers a single clause or commercial risk in full: what to look for, what it costs, exactly how to push back, what a clean version looks like.
Recent and upcoming issues cover:
IP ownership and the five words that decide who actually owns your work
Kill fees and what to do when a client cancels
“Satisfactory completion” and the invoice that never gets paid
Plus regular standalones on the contract stories in the news
Alongside the main issues, occasional standalone pieces tackle bigger questions: how to use AI to review a contract, why every existing option for non-lawyers fails, and what good legal infrastructure looks like for a small business.
Why it might be different from what you expect
Three things, briefly.
Small Print is anchored in English law. If you are signing or sending UK contracts, the advice here actually applies.
It is commercial, not legal. I do not tell you what a clause says. I tell you what it costs. The framing throughout is: What is the worst-case financial outcome of signing this as written, and what do I do about it before I sign? Every piece ends with action.
It is for non-lawyers. That is a deliberate choice. The whole reason this newsletter exists is that contract content tends to be written either by lawyers for lawyers (impenetrable) or by general AI tools for everyone (unreliable). I am trying to do a third thing: serious legal thinking delivered in language a non-lawyer can actually use.
What it will not be
This is not legal advice. It is not a substitute for a lawyer in matters that warrant one. Small Print covers the high-frequency, low-to-mid-value contract decisions that most non-lawyers have to make alone, because hiring a lawyer for a £1,000 contract makes no commercial sense.
It is also not a sales funnel. I am building a contract review tool called BeforeYouSign. I will mention it where relevant. I will never pretend the newsletter is something other than what it is, and I will never write a Small Print issue whose primary purpose is to sell you the product.
Most issues are contract pieces. Occasionally I publish something different. See below.
What BeforeYouSign is, and Cohort 2
BeforeYouSign is in build. It reads your contract before you sign it. It tells you what the payment terms actually say. What happens if the client changes their mind. Whether you own the work when the project ends. What you are on the hook for if something goes wrong. Plain English. English law. Minutes, not weeks.
How the tool works. Upload your contract at beforeyousign.uk. Hit Analyse Contract. Create a free account: first name, email, password. Get a full report on what a General Counsel would flag, what to push back on, and the exact counter-language to send. Every user gets the same full report. Nothing held back.
Cohort 2 is a small group of freelancers, founders and small business owners helping shape the product before it launches. Members get first sight of new features, a direct line to me as I build, an interview slot to feed their contract experience into the product, and a named contributor credit at launch. In return, I ask for honest survey answers on the way in, occasional follow-up, and genuine use of the tool on real contracts. No cost. Small time commitment. Real influence over what gets built.
One more thing
Every other Wednesday, alongside the contract issues, I publish a series called I am not an entrepreneur, written from my evenings, after the corporate job and the family logistics are done, about what it is actually like to build a company while still running a global legal function. It is a personal series, not a contract series. It is for the people who have spent years telling themselves they are not the kind of person who builds, and who are starting to suspect they have been wrong all along.
If you subscribe to Small Print, both will land in your inbox. Each one is labelled clearly in the subject line so you can read the contract issues, the founder essays, both, or neither. The decision is yours every time. I will not be offended by an unopened email.
How to subscribe
If you have ever signed something and wished you understood it better, subscribe. The first issue you read should tell you within a coffee break whether the rest will be useful.
Subscribe to Small Print for free to receive new posts and support my work. Thank you.
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