A SOW and why you need one?

A SOW sounds like a giant pig but in legal terms it is considered a "Statement of Work". According to the business dictionary a SOW is defined as,"Detailed description of the specific services or tasks a contractor is required to perform under a contract. SOW is usually incorporated in a contract, indirectly by reference or directly as an attachment".


In other words it is the beginnings of a contract and details between two entities is under common law practices. In todays digital age certain contract formalities have become less rigorous due to the lower cost for jobs especially when it comes to freelance work. Smaller scope projects are not costing thousands of dollars due to the supply of freelancers and companies I have discussed like Fiverr and Upwork. According to the, "Payoneer's 2018 Income Survey indicates that hourly rates for freelancers fall between $11 and $28 depending on the industry, with the average income for freelancers being $19". With that being said we can make an educated guess that a small project could take a maximum of 20 hours to complete. Therefore, an average job could cost around $380. These sites allow entrepreneurs to explore ideas and start to develop contextual content that can better help them sort out their ideas.


This is where the SOW comes in. Even for small jobs, protection and details for what you want the project to be are critical. I can give a personal example when I was exploring different ideas for a logo for my website. I ended up using Fiverr and I filled out their template to describe the project and they try to get the deliverables out of you. At the time I didn't have much education on contracts or deliverables. In the end I got a shitty logo with what the person thought was exactly in line with what I described in my deliverables. With this learning experience I am saying if I had used a SOW template (Statement of Work) I would have been able to take a step back and see what was required from both sides. The beauty of having a SOW ready to go in a template like form is it can be adjusted easily by you or on a platform that can help you customize it. No project or contract is exactly the same but in the high turnover projects with entrepreneurs I believe working with lawyers to find a generalized format of a SOW can be very useful to an entrepreneur. The SOW is not the end all be all document but I want to explore some questions to sort what could be useful to someone who is doing smaller projects to build a big idea. 

In the legal world is a SOW the only important document necessary in these frequently used smaller type projects for entrepreneurs? What else is required for someone to protect their brand and be setup better for when a bigger contracted job comes around? Could there be a generalized form that helped entrepreneurs detail out a project with general legal language in the document? 


Until next time. 


Cheers,


Legalme.app Team (coming soon to you)




















Sources:
https://www.smallbizgenius.net/by-the-numbers/gig-economy-statistics/

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/statement-of-work-SOW.html 

Image:
https://www.storyboardthat.com/storyboards/niharikapothukuchi/watertight-sow