IAAL. If you do the self-service route for terms of service, make sure you do your homework. If you do a search/replace on someone else's terms (even those offered under CC or other permissive licenses), make sure you at least run some Google searches on the rationale behind each clause of the terms. There is a HUGE amount of common ground from one site's terms to another's, but you can still get badly burned if you miss something on liability, IP rights, user generated content, etc.
The one area that I recommend you learn about is enforceability of online terms. Make sure you understand concepts like unconscionable terms, conspicuous notice, valid assent, and so on. These are big, ugly words, but the concepts behind them are not difficult to grasp. Every online transaction is a balance between disclosing important terms to users on the one hand, and not being obnoxious about it on the other hand.
Same advise applies to privacy policies, although it's worth noting that those are typically just plain language disclosures of your practices (at least in the U.S.)
Anyway, I'm curious because I'm considering offering review/preparation of website terms and privacy policies as a fixed fee service: what would you say is a fair price for that?
(Obligatory: My comments above aren't intended as legal advice and I don't represent anyone on HN.)
I recently spoke to a lawyer, and the cost of starting a business through him seemed reasonable, until we discussed a privacy policy and terms of service. The cost suddenly doubled, even though he stated that he would be just copying them from a similar site and adjusting them to my site's needs. I realize the importance of these items, but I'm still not willing to pay multiple thousands of dollars for them.
I for one would pay a reasonable fee for such a service. So far, I have found http://www.bennadel.com/coldfusion/privacy-policy-generator.... which does exactly what you said: a search/replace of some generic ToS, but reading it I see that almost none of it applies (e.g.: I would have no users interacting with each other and trading goods/services).
The one area that I recommend you learn about is enforceability of online terms. Make sure you understand concepts like unconscionable terms, conspicuous notice, valid assent, and so on. These are big, ugly words, but the concepts behind them are not difficult to grasp. Every online transaction is a balance between disclosing important terms to users on the one hand, and not being obnoxious about it on the other hand.
Same advise applies to privacy policies, although it's worth noting that those are typically just plain language disclosures of your practices (at least in the U.S.)
Anyway, I'm curious because I'm considering offering review/preparation of website terms and privacy policies as a fixed fee service: what would you say is a fair price for that?
(Obligatory: My comments above aren't intended as legal advice and I don't represent anyone on HN.)