Lexitas’s Independent Contractor Agreement is an Example of Corporate Fear

Sometime at the end of last year, a Stenonymous source leaked Lexitas’s independent contractor agreement to me.

This kind of thing wasn’t a thing historically. Even when NYC passed that law where independent contractors needed a contract, a lot of “freelancers” didn’t get one.

You know what’s changed in the last 13 years? A popular court reporting blog popped up and started talking about employee misclassification and unionization. Safe bet that these people are paying attention and they’re afraid. Their misclassification of you is a massive liability. Let’s just say the workers comp insurers would have a field day if people were more assertive in exercising their rights.

First of all, let’s just say that in the event of a misclassification claim, hopefully a fact finder would consider who writes the contract. The more powerful entity, by far, is Lexitas. You want work? You’re gonna work on their terms. Of course you’re gonna sign the contract. They even go out of their way to say they’re not forming an agency relationship with the independent contractor. So court reporting agencies don’t want to call themselves agencies when it means you might be a misclassified employee.

The second laughable thing is that this contract has no consideration. There’s no point in signing it. They’re not promising you a damn thing. It says, in brief:

1. You’re an independent contractor.

2. You pay your own taxes.

3. You don’t solicit their clients, employees, or other independent contractors.

4. You use their formatting and submission portal. A/K/A they have direction and control over you for submission and completion of work. Just so we’re clear, independent contractors are supposed to be free of direction and control.

5. You’ll give them all your work products and notes when you’re done “independent contractoring” for them.

6. You’ll pay for all damages and attorney fees if you breach the agreement.

“We have no relationship, you’re independent from us, but you do everything in the way we like it and pay us if you don’t.”

Lexitas, fuck you (as an entity. Conceded many of your employees are going to be good people.) I hope every single “independent contractor” you had sign this sham goes right to a lawyer, claims misclassification, and gets their self-employment taxes back right out of your wallet and your workers comp insurance skyrockets because they realize you’ve misclassified a whole segment of your workforce. And I hope that when your dipshit lawyer brings this agreement into court, the misclassified employee’s lawyer brings my blog post into court and says “look, judge, even this idiot with the blog knows this is a scam meant to cover the ass of the agency while giving nothing to my client.” While I’m at it, let me put it out there that when another agency was challenged on this, they settled rather than get their ass kicked in court.

I may be on the losing side because my fellow court reporters can’t be bothered to protect their own interests in any substantial way, but hey, I tried. And lucky for me, if you keep doing what corporations do, squeezing and squeezing, eventually, they might try too, because the “pain” of trying something new will pale in comparison to the pain of all the revenue they’re generating for you being sucked away from them and their families by mankind’s greatest wealth-extraction device, the corporation.

For the record, I’m not opposed to making money. I’m as capitalist as they come and hoping that someday my writing is recognized, ahem, monetarily. I’m opposed to making money at the expense of all else. This isn’t limited to private sector. I’m opposed to the habitual collars for dollars crowd too.

But such is a story for another day.