How do I make a digital agreement without a lawyer?

What a usable agreement needs

An agreement between a freelancer and a client is usable when a stranger reading it later can tell who agreed to what, for how much, and by when. Whatever tool you use, the text itself must cover five things.

1. Both parties identified. Full legal names, a business name if one applies, and a way to reach each person.
2. Scope. What will be delivered, in plain words, including what is not included.
3. Price and payment terms. The amount, the currency, when it is due, and what happens if payment is late.
4. Dates. Start date, delivery date or milestones, and how timeline changes get agreed.
5. Signatures with a timestamp. Both people sign the same final text, and the record shows when each signature happened.

When a lawyer is optional and when one is worth the money

For a simple deal, most freelancers do fine with a clear written agreement that both sides sign: a one-off logo, a two-week site build, a weekend of framing work. The terms are ordinary, and both people mainly want a shared record.

A lawyer earns the fee when the stakes or the structure are unusual. Five signals that you should get local advice before signing:

TrustChain does not replace that advice. It makes whatever you did agree to hard to dispute later.

1. The total is more than you could afford to lose.
2. The work involves intellectual property that either side wants to own exclusively.
3. The text contains non-compete, exclusivity, or indemnity clauses.
4. The client and the freelancer are in different countries.
5. One side is a company with its own legal team and a long standard contract.

Option 1: an email or text thread

Cost: free. A thread is better than nothing, but it is easy to dispute. Messages can be deleted or edited on one side, and there is no single final version both people clearly agreed to. When a client says "that is not what we discussed," scrolling through six weeks of messages rarely settles it.

Option 2: a generic e-sign tool

Cost: a free tier or a monthly fee. A standard e-signature tool gives you one clean document with a signature on it. Two things are usually missing. First, there is no identity check: anyone holding the email link can sign, so you have a signature but no proof of who made it. Second, the record of who signed and when lives with the vendor: many tools seal the PDF against edits, but the dates in the audit trail rest on the vendor's report. The comparison at trustchain.biz/vs-docusign sets TrustChain against e-signature tools and against hiring a lawyer.

Option 3: TrustChain

Cost: free for 1 agreement a month, no card needed. TrustChain adds the two missing pieces. Both parties verify identity with a photo ID plus a selfie, and an unverified account can't sign. Each signature is logged in a timestamped audit trail. Optionally, the signed agreement is anchored on the Polygon blockchain, which writes a fingerprint of it to a public transaction, and anyone with the public link can check the record without creating an account.

How it works, step by step

A Polygon anchor is optional. The free plan does not include one, and you can add one for $1. Pro ($19 a month) includes 20 anchors and Elite ($49 a month) includes 100. Full plan details are at trustchain.biz/pricing.

1. One party creates the agreement and invites the other by email.
2. Once both have TrustChain accounts, they can talk it through in an end-to-end encrypted chat on the agreement; the text itself is fixed when the agreement is created.
3. Each verifies identity through Sumsub, photo ID plus selfie, before signing.
4. Both e-sign; each signature is logged with a timestamp, and anchoring adds a public fingerprint.
5. Either party downloads their own record, certificate and PDF on any plan, and shares the public link if someone else needs to check it.

The AI Advisor: a clause explainer, not a lawyer

Every plan includes the AI Advisor, with 3 requests a month on the Free plan. It does three things: explains a clause in plain language, flags wording that creates risk for you, and rewrites weak wording so it says what you meant. It is useful when a client sends a paragraph you do not fully follow.

The AI Advisor gives general guidance, not legal advice. Its answers are grounded in an actual statute only for the British Columbia Builders Lien Act; on every other topic it is a well-read assistant, not a licensed professional. When a clause matters enough that a wrong reading would cost real money, take it to a professional in your jurisdiction.

What the record does and does not do

The cryptographic part of an anchored TrustChain record works the same everywhere: anyone can check the fingerprint and its Polygon date on a public block explorer, wherever they live. Whether the agreement itself is enforceable depends on where the parties are and what they agreed, and TrustChain makes no claim about enforceability in any particular place. It also does not collect the money for you. What it does is make the record of the deal hard to dispute, so a payment conversation starts from agreed facts, not two competing memories. How records are stored and anchored is described at trustchain.biz/security.

Put your next deal in writing for free at trustchain.biz: 1 agreement a month, no card, both identities verified.