"It's OK to do a couple of those jobs when you're starting out"

I don't think it's OK at all. Some people will, for various valid reasons, need to work for sites like this for a long time or indefinitely. Even for those who only have to rely upon sites like this for a short time this kind of exposure to risk is not ok. It shouldn't be allowed. Contracts that totally indemnify a company in a situation like this shouldn't be enforceable.

I've been fortunate in my consulting, I take it you have too. Not everyone can rise above the rat race like we have and pick our clients to our liking. Furthermore, this is the future of work. The majority of new jobs added to the economy during the recession (sorry I can't find the gov't report) were considered "non-standard". This is the fastest growing sector of labor in the west. Ultimately workers doing "freelance" work deserve protections. Until congress reacts to this change in the labor force I believe it's incumbent on people like us to expose and push back on predatory contracts.

> Contracts that totally indemnify a company in a situation like this shouldn't be enforceable.

I definitely agree that as more people find themselves freelancing, we need to establish better legal protections for freelancers.

Lots of indemnity clauses are just ridiculous. Here's how to get over-broad indemnity clauses removed:

"Hey, I noticed you had some unusually strong indemnity clauses in your contract, which would require my company to cover your costs in situations X, Y and Z, which are outside of our control. As a general rule, we're not in the insurance business—we leave that to Lloyd's of London (laugh). But if this is important to you, I can look into purchasing a special insurance rider to cover these issues. This will delay the start date a bit and will obviously have an effect on the costs; I can get you a quote if you're interested. If not, we could replace this with <suggest standard, fair language here>."

If they're not willing to either (a) pay extra for the insurance they want, or (b) swap out the indemnity clause for something more neutral, then you walk. The only way to work for good clients is to discipline yourself to walk away from the bad ones. (Also, charge more, require a payment up front, and always quote daily or weekly rates, never hourly. This will improve the quality of your clients dramatically.)

Anybody who insists on broad indemnity clauses should be paying enterprise rates and the contracts should be reviewed by lawyers for both sides.

Another good approach is to pay to have your own standard contract drafted (without anything obnoxious in it), and send it to the client.

> "Contractor agrees to indemnify Gigster from any and all claims, damages, liability, settlement, attorneys’ fees and expenses, as incurred, on account of the foregoing or any breach of this agreement"

There's no way that's legal, right? Like, you can have a broad indemnity clause, even for willful malfeasance. You can have a clause forcing arbitration. But Gigster's clause says "as part of this contract, you have no recourse if we intentionally violate this contract". Surely that's not legal, in the same sense that you can't sign a contract which flows entirely one direction. It literally states that Gigster can't be treated as having signed the contract they are currently signing.

> The other reason why I wouldn't touch a site like Gigster is that those sites almost always turn into a race to the bottom for low-value jobs for the most difficult clients.

I've never actually taken a contract from one of these sites, but having looked at them before, this has been my observation every time I've considered it. Spend 20 minutes browsing posted contracts, getting increasingly frustrated, and then just write off the entire site.

The thing is, these sites aren't well-suited for creating contract relationships. To make money, they want to keep you at the site. Plus all of the commissions, etc. It's just like Homejoy, etc -- the value add is in the initial intro, but they're trying to make money off of you perpetually. It's not sustainable and it's never that successful in the first place.

Word to the wise: if you want to build a site that does something like this -- any potentially long-term arrangement where money is being exchanged for services via contract -- start by building a cross between Craigslist and Yelp, and then, once you're established as a good way for clients to find contractors, offer them some kind of long-term value add (automatic invoicing, timekeeping, whatever). Monetize the latter, but keep the former free.

In my experience, it's very unusual for a company to simply state that it won't talk about it at all.

I get one of these two patterns:

1. "Oh, okay, we see your point. We'll cross out clauses X and Y."

2. "Oh, thank you, we'll take this very seriously. Now we will have people talk at you for hours about why you can trust us and everyone else here was dumb enough to sign up."

In my career I only had one case of #2. The person called me and said something like "if a partner isn't willing to sign agreement X, then we shouldn't be doing business with them". I said "ok" and hung up.

An hour later that guy's bosses boss called me to apologize..

I've experienced #2 once and seen it happen to a colleague once.

I've had "This is a standard contract and can't be changed."

I said I wouldn't sign it in that case, and suddenly it turned out it could be changed after all....

I've worked on contract projects for years too and I couldn't have written a better response. In that time I only had one client where the standard contract was reasonable. Contracts are 99% of the time changed before being signed.