Before You Sign

Which legal entity is on the other side, and is it the one with the money.

Ask for

• The full legal name and jurisdiction of the entity signing, and its relationship to the brand you believe you are working with.
• Who is actually obligated to pay you, and what happens to that obligation if an agency or intermediary in the chain fails.
• Confirmation that the person signing has authority to grant rights this broad and to bind the company to the money.

The number, the currency, and the calendar date it is due. A season is a mood; a date is a term.

Ask for

• The gross figure and the currency, with every deduction between that number and your account named in the document.
• A calendar date for payment tied to your delivery, never to the client’s internal cycles or the phrase "upon receipt."
• A remedy that applies automatically when the date passes, so lateness costs the payer instead of costing you.

Where the work can run, in which media, for how long, and what renews without you.

Ask for

• Every medium, territory, and duration written out. Silence in a rights grant is read against you, never for you.
• Whether the grant reaches material shot but never used, behind-the-scenes footage, and outtakes.
• An end date on everything, with renewals priced as their own decision rather than assumed in the original fee.

What you are locked out of, how widely, for how long, and what it pays. Exclusivity is something you sell.

Ask for

• The category defined narrowly enough that you could list the actual competitors it covers.
• A territory and a clock on the lockout, both bounded, both stated.
• A separate fee for the exclusivity itself. An unpaid lockout is a gift you were talked into.

Any AI, voice, or digital likeness language gets its own consent, its own description of use, and its own fee, or it comes out.

Ask for

• A separately signed consent naming each intended use of any digital version of you, specific enough to recognize.
• A fee attached to each use or term of use, never a blanket grant folded silently into a day rate.
• The right to decline future uses, and where the law allows it, deletion of the underlying data on request.

How long you are in, how you leave, and what leaving costs.

Ask for

• The full length with every option, extension, and renewal counted into one honest number.
• Your exits named: for cause, for inactivity, and at will, each with its notice period and its price.
• What happens to money already in motion, and to rights already granted, on the day it ends.

Anything that continues without your signature deserves a diary date and a decision.

Ask for

• Automatic renewals converted into affirmative ones wherever you can win the point.
• Where an auto-renewal survives, a notice window you can realistically meet, and the date in your own calendar the day you sign.

Who signs off on the work, the edit, and the use of your name, and how long they have.

Ask for

• Approval over the final edit, the caption, and the context your work appears in, each named separately.
• A response window binding their side as well as yours. An approval right that stalls your payment is a trap wearing a courtesy’s clothes.

What can be charged back to you, at what ceiling, and whether anything can be charged without your written yes.

Ask for

• A written ceiling, and a rule that nothing above it is charged without your prior written approval.
• Receipts attached to every line on every statement. A category is a label rather than an explanation.
• No interest, ever, on anything advanced. An advance that earns interest is a loan you never applied for.

How you are named, where, and what happens when they get it wrong.

Ask for

• The exact form of your name and where it appears, in the work and in the promotion of the work.
• A cure provision: what the counterparty must do, and by when, once a credit error is pointed out.

Any license, assignment, or control that touches your own name is a different category of decision. Treat it that way.

Ask for

• A register of who owns each registration of your name, in every territory where one exists.
• No license or assignment touching the name signed before independent counsel, retained by you alone, has read it.
• Control provisions that survive any sale, merger, or change of ownership on the other side.

The clauses that continue after the agreement ends, listed and read twice.

Ask for

• A survival clause that lists what outlives the agreement, in the document itself, rather than leaving it to argument.
• Confidentiality, non-competition, and usage grants read against their own end dates, twice.
• Nothing perpetual without a price that says the word perpetuity out loud.