In one sentence
The contract catalogue grows by thirteen templates — and contract creation can now be found at all in the place where most people arrive: the private view.
Four contracts for everyday use
The four new templates that are needed most often cover situations in which a template from the internet otherwise tends to have to serve:
- Home-office agreement (from 35 credits) — arrangements for mobile working as an addendum to the existing employment contract.
- Minijob contract (from 35 credits) — Minijob (marginal employment under German law), with the details that actually belong in it.
- Privacy policy for a website or app (from 30 credits).
- General terms and conditions for consumers (from 45 credits) — the B2C case, with the right of withdrawal and information duties.
Nine for project and commissioned work
The second block is aimed at everyone who delivers, or has others deliver, on their own account: game development (from 70), software development (from 55), subcontracting (from 50), agency (from 50), web design (from 40), sponsorship (from 40), affiliate (from 35), coaching (from 35) and photography (from 30 credits).
The game development contract is the most elaborate in the catalogue, because it has to cover two very different constellations — pure commissioned development, and the publishing deal with a revenue share. What needs to be considered is set out in the help article on it.
The fix that mattered more than the catalogue
Thirteen new templates are a piece of news. The real correction is a different one: contract creation was until now tied to the business view. Anyone who classified themselves as a private individual after signing up — that is, precisely the group who arrive via a search for a model contract — could then no longer find the function at all, structurally. The page they came in through promised something their account no longer displayed.
This coupling has been removed. Contract creation now behaves like the deadline centre or the document storage: present in both views. A home-office contract is not a feature of companies anyway — it is signed by the person who works at home.
What we have switched off — and why
The most honest part of this news item is a deletion. For some contract families there were versions for Austria and Switzerland. A clause-by-clause review found that only the non-disclosure agreement has genuine, independently drafted AT and CH versions that actually reflect the respective legal position.
The AT and CH versions of the freelance and IT services contracts, by contrast, were word for word identical to the German version — the currency had been swapped, nothing else. The name said one country, the text said German law. We have deactivated these versions rather than continue to assert a country version that was none. A country label is worthless if nobody has checked the clause text against the legal system named in it — and it is worse than worthless if somebody relies on it. Genuine AT and CH versions modelled on the non-disclosure agreement will come when they are finished, not before.
What a template does not do
A contract template is a structured starting point, not contract drafting. It does not know your negotiating position, nor the history with the other side, nor the oral assurances that have already been given. Where contract values are high, where liability is allocated unusually, where rights in copyright-protected work are transferred, or where the other side submits its own draft, the point is reached at which a lawyer’s review makes the difference. Whether a template holds up in your situation depends on circumstances that do not appear in the form.
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