I will put this out there though, if you are a performer who truly feels your agent is in violation, contact me and I always help as best I can for free. I’m not a lawyer but I do have years of experience in dealing with the labor board and contracts.

As far as the other suggestions though, love it! Totally going to do a new article with all that!!

Something that would be great to add and stress is that contracts are usually negotiable until the moment they are signed. Also that models need to read and understand the terms of the contract before signing, specifically the length of the contract, if it auto-renews, and what the related deadlines and procedures are required in order to end the contract.

Most agents will accept a 1 year contract term even if they initially deliver a 3 year contract for the model to sign. Percentages are also negotiable with a lot of agents. Exclusions for bookings the agency will not receive commissions on are usually negotiable with a lot of agents which can include geographical areas or specific producers that the talent is currently self booking in/with.

The new model may not know what to look for. It would be great if you could put together an article that informs new models about what contract terms they could potentially obtain so they know what to potentially negotiate.

I personally don’t think 3 year contract terms are appropriate for new models in this industry as that may encompass their entire adult industry career. I don’t like auto-renews either because most new models are new to business as well and will overlook or forget that they need to give written notice before their contract expires to not automatically renew the contract.

I’d also like to know more about the procedure for a model to use the State of California’s labor commission’s dispute system for getting out of contracts where the agency has acted illegally. What are some of those illegal actions that would allow a model to be able to win the dispute? Models should be aware if they think a contract is invalid or think they have a justified legal reason to get out of it that this mechanism is also available to them as a cheap and easy way to find out if they can get out, and if so get out. California has a lot of rules that even the best of agents break. What are these rules that could end in legal termination if broken, and will the State of California nullify contracts when they are challenged in this way?