Can Clients Sue You If Your Consultancy Efforts Fail?

Something has gone wrong in a consultancy project. Does this mean you're legally liable? Well, it depends on a couple of things.

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Can You Be Sued?

Let’s imagine you are a marketing consultant. You give your client a strategy to follow. They follow the strategy but their market share doesn’t increase.

Are you legally liable for this failure? Could the client sue you and reclaim their money?

There is a simple and a more complex answer to this.

The simple answer is it depends on your contract.

The Contract

Only Promise Deliverables, Never Outcomes

Around 2013, I worked with a client who insisted on a performance-related contract. I put together the strategy and created our usual set of deliverables. Then the person running the project left and wasn’t replaced. The project was kept in stasis for a few months and then cancelled. I invested a huge amount of time and only received a fraction of the payment I should have received.

This is the problem with being paid by the outcome; you can’t control all of the outcomes.

Likewise, major ext…