🛶 Don’t let your website get you sued

Hi there!

I'm Michelle Wilson, a small business attorney who helps service providers and freelancers protect their business with practical legal solutions.

And Carolyn has allowed me to take over her newsletter to share with you all about your website legal requirements.

I run The CEO Legal Loft where I share legal tips and resources about contracts and intellectual property for service providers and freelancers. Additionally, I run a law firm Wilson Murphy Law, where I help businesses register their trademarks to protect their brand.

Legal pages are something that no business owner actually wants to deal with...

...but in the long run they help protect your business and help keep you from getting sued or shut down.

When someone says, "You need a privacy policy or website terms and conditions" your body may tense up or your brain checks out because it is just something else to add to your never ending list of to dos.

I get it.

Legal pages sound boring, and they feel optional right up until you can’t run ads because you don’t have a privacy policy, a customer files a chargeback, or you're getting in trouble for information posted on your website.

Whether you know it or not, your website is already collecting data.

Your host logs visitors, your contact form collects names and emails, and tools like Google Analytics track behavior.

So if your site is doing anything besides looking pretty, it's time to add these policies to follow the law and protect you from visitors.

The website legal basics

If you have nothing else, your website needs to cover these pages:

• Privacy Policy: Explain what you collect, why you collect it, and what tools touch it (analytics, email platform, payment processor). Add a footer link and link it anywhere you collect info.
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• Terms and Conditions: Set the rules for using your site, protect your content, and limit liability for things you can't control. Put it in your footer, then add a checkbox at checkout if you sell.
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• Cookie policy (and sometimes a banner): If you use tracking pixels or analytics, you may need cookie disclosures. If you market to EU visitors, you also need explicit consent to use those cookies..
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• Disclaimers: Add a general "info only" disclaimer, then add extra ones if you talk about income, health, or use affiliate links.

And if you sell anything (a download, a package, a product), add a clear refund and cancellation policy.

People look for that when they feel uncertain about making a purchase, and credit card companies like to see it when disputes happen.

Do this self-audit today:

Before you copy-paste anything, walk through your site like a new visitor and write down:

• Where someone gives you information (forms, checkout, newsletter signups)
• What happens next (added to a list, tagged, sent to Stripe, tracked for ads)
• Where your customers live (because GDPR and state privacy laws can change the rules)

That quick list makes your legal pages accurate, and accuracy is the whole point.

Want the full list?

This article goes into much more detail about how to figure out which legal pages you need for your business and the laws behind them (not in a legalese kinda way but a plain english kind).

Are you missing key website legal requirements?
​Here's what to fix →​

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Thanks for joining me today!

- Michelle Wilson, The CEO Legal Loft ​
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