Design Professional and Consultant Agreements

Putting Together Agreements For Design Professionals and Consultants

Issues In Design Professional Agreements

• Drafting professional agreements — We are familiar with the language found in many industry-standard design professional agreements. We work with these forms as well as our own original documents to create agreements that best suit our clients' needs and their project goals. We ensure that critical issues such as insurance and indemnity are dealt with properly and that the parties come to terms in a fair and balanced agreement. We strive to draft documents that will minimize or avoid disputes altogether as construction proceeds.
• Ownership of documents — We know the issues related to licensing and ownership of plans, designs and other intellectual property documents, and how difficult they can be. Our attorneys are knowledgeable about the copyright issues that must be addressed when using documents created by design professionals.
• Multiple design professionals — Our lawyers understand the potential conflicts that can arise when multiple design professionals are involved in a project. We have developed a matrix template that details the responsibilities of each design professional and how they interrelate, in a given project. This allows us to draft design professional agreements that much more precisely describe the rights and responsibilities, and their timing, of each individual involved in the project. Overlapping and multiple design professionals are not necessarily a complication when proper care is taken to clearly define and integrate their roles.