US services agreements: what you cannot leave out

Anyone selling services to US clients learns early that a contract is not there to win lawsuits: it is there to prevent arguments. Most vendor-client disputes come from three simple gaps — a vague scope, an ambiguous payment term, and no termination rule.

Scope is the heart of the document. Describe concrete deliverables instead of generic promises. "Marketing consulting" is not scope; "four monthly performance reports and two review calls" is. Anything excluded should be written as excluded.

On payment, define currency, term in days, payment method, who absorbs bank fees and what happens on late payment. A modest late-payment interest plus a suspension-of-services clause resolves most delays before they become collections.

Then come the protections: confidentiality, IP ownership of deliverables, limitation of liability, governing law and venue. This is where most free templates fail — they mix clauses from different jurisdictions and contradict themselves.

In Pactum, every answer in the questionnaire changes the final contract text. Instead of filling in blanks, you assemble a coherent document, drafted in English, in minutes.