[tptacek]

Every single client we work with has an executed NDA. If you're going to consult professionally, you need to be able to sign reasonable NDAs.

What that probably means is, you need to get a lawyer to do contract review for you. In other words, every NDA you sign is going to cost you a couple hundred bucks.

Early on, you might eyeball NDAs and then sign them (D.C. Toedt's resource posted crossthread being one way to do that), but once you have an established practice, the risk/reward on freelancing your own legal review stops making any sense at all.

Anybody who tells you consultants never sign NDAs is someone who doesn't do serious consulting. How could it even be possible to consult seriously without signing NDAs? You'd only be able to work on and with public information for clients. I get the sense that a lot of this "never! no NDA!" sentiment is a mix of two things: (a) confusion over the fact that venture capitalists don't sign NDAs (though maybe they should) and (b) the fact that a lot of people who call themselves consultants are really doing one-off freelance work for tiny companies, which, sure, if that's your cup of tea, but...

[ig1]

I think the question to some extent is about the stage you sign an NDA. While it's perfectly normal to sign an NDA when you start a contract, I wouldn't sign one before initial conversations unless I strongly trusted the client, because without knowing the scope of the project you have _no idea_ what's going to be covered by the NDA and it may include things that cause you significant problems down the line.