3 freelance contract clauses that are quietly stealing your money (and the exact fixes)

If you freelance, you've signed a contract you didn't fully read. Most of us have — the client sends a PDF, you're excited about the work, you skim it, you sign. Then three months later a clause you glossed over costs you real money.

I build a set of Claude Code skills for freelance admin, and the contract-review one (/redline) exists because I got burned by exactly this. Here are the three clauses it flags most often — the ones that quietly move risk onto you — plus the exact edit to push back with.

None of this is legal advice. It's a plain-English risk scan for people who can't afford a lawyer on every $2,000 gig.

1. "All IP transfers to the Client upon signing"

Read that literally: ownership of your work passes the moment you sign — before you've been paid a cent. If the client ghosts you at 80% done, they legally own what you've built and you've lost your only leverage.

The fix — tie IP to payment, not signature:

"Ownership of the final deliverables transfers to the Client upon receipt of final payment."

One word changed ("signing" → "final payment"), and now getting paid and handing over the work happen together. This is the single most important edit on this list.

2. "Payment due Net-60 from invoice date"

Net-60 means you finance the client's business, interest-free, for two months — while your own rent, software subscriptions, and taxes don't wait 60 days. Net-30 is already generous. Net-60+ is a cash-flow trap dressed up as standard boilerplate.

The fix — shorten the terms and add a late fee:

"Payment terms are Net-15, with a 1.5% per month late fee on overdue balances."

The late fee matters as much as the shorter terms — it gives "overdue" an actual cost, which is what gets your invoice moved to the top of the pile.

3. "Contractor shall provide revisions until the Client is fully satisfied"

There's no ceiling here, and "satisfied" is entirely the client's call. One logo project becomes six weeks of unpaid tweaks because someone's boss keeps changing their mind. Unlimited-revision language is how a fixed-price project turns into an hourly job you're not billing for.

The fix — cap the rounds, price the overflow:

"Includes 2 rounds of revisions per deliverable; further rounds are billed at my hourly rate."

Now revisions are bounded, and extra work is paid work instead of a favor you resent.

The pattern

Notice what all three have in common: they're not evil, and most clients aren't trying to trap you — this language is copy-pasted boilerplate nobody re-reads. But the defaults quietly favor whoever wrote the contract, and that's usually not you. A five-minute read before signing is the highest-ROI thing you'll do on the whole project.

If you want this as a checklist you don't have to remember, the /redline skill reads a whole contract and flags every clause like these in plain English — it's part of a free-and-paid pack of Claude Code skills for freelance admin:

• Free to try in the browser / see real sample output: freelancekit.tools/examples
• The skills (installable in Claude Code): /plugin marketplace add ricardo-agent/freelancer-skills

But honestly — even if you never touch any of that, save the three edits above. They're yours. Copy them into the next contract you're sent.

What's the worst clause you've ever signed without noticing? I collect these.