Accord and Shield Legal

08/27/2026

The first security questionnaire is a project. The fortieth is a filing system.

Somewhere in between, the answers stop being written fresh and start being copied — from the last deal, from a spreadsheet, from whoever answered it last time. Nobody does anything wrong. The company just keeps shipping.

Depending on the deal documents, each answer may create a customer-specific commitment or representation. After enough deals, those statements can quietly stop agreeing with each other — and with the product.

Our new article covers what actually drifts (subprocessors, data residency, retention windows, training commitments, audit scope), why it stays invisible until a customer's auditor asks, and what to check before your next renewal cycle.

https://accordshield.com/blog-security-questionnaire-commitment-drift

Accord & Shield Legal, PLLC · Scottsdale · AZ, CA, TX General information, not legal advice.

You have answered dozens of security questionnaires and signed as many DPAs. Over time those commitments stop agreeing with each other and with the product.

08/26/2026

Your engineering team shipped an AI feature last sprint. Somewhere in that work, the product started sending customer data to a third-party model provider.

Nobody signed a new contract. But the contracts you already signed may have something to say about it.

Where a model provider processes customer data on your behalf, it will often fall within the definition of "subprocessor" in your existing DPAs — which can trigger notice obligations, objection windows, and commitments about training on customer data.

Our new article walks through what your agreements likely already require, what else goes stale the same day (subprocessor lists, security questionnaire answers, data-residency commitments), and how to sequence it before you ship rather than after.

https://accordshield.com/blog-ai-subprocessor-customer-contract-obligations

Accord & Shield Legal, PLLC · Scottsdale · AZ, CA, TX General information, not legal advice.

Adding an AI vendor to your SaaS makes it a subprocessor under DPAs you already signed. What notice, objection, and no-training obligations that triggers.

08/25/2026

New on the blog: Reseller and Channel Partner Agreements for SaaS Companies — What the Contract Needs to Cover

Signing your first reseller or channel partner is a real growth milestone. It's also the point where a handshake understanding starts costing money.

Most channel disputes trace back to the same place: revenue math that seemed obvious at signing and turned out not to be. If the contract can't answer "what do we owe on this specific invoice" without a phone call, the clause needs more precision — not more trust.

The article covers the five questions a reseller agreement has to answer before either side signs:

• Revenue share and commission structure — including what counts as a "sale," and what happens to commissions when a customer refunds or downgrades
• Territory and exclusivity — how to scope it before you promise it
• Trademark and brand license — keeping the grant narrow and controlled
• Minimum commitments — and the consequences that make them real
• Termination and wind-down — who keeps the customer, and the customer data

It also explains why a reseller agreement is a different animal from a marketplace agreement or a white-label deal, and why a template built for one won't hold up for another.

Written by Nadine Deeb, Esq. Accord & Shield Legal, PLLC is a Scottsdale-based business law firm advising founders and technology companies across Arizona, California, and Texas.

Read it here: https://accordshield.com/blog-reseller-channel-partner-agreements-saas

This article is general information, not legal advice.

What a SaaS reseller or channel partner agreement should cover: revenue share, territory, trademark license scope, minimum commitments, and termination.

08/21/2026

Quick question for SaaS founders running a marketplace: if a seller on your platform scams a buyer, does your agreement actually protect you — or did you copy-paste a template and hope for the best?

Marketplace agreements are where a lot of platforms get exposed. Payment flow, liability allocation, who owns the customer data, what happens when a seller gets flagged for fraud — these terms matter more as you scale, not less.

We just broke down exactly what needs to be in a marketplace agreement for SaaS/PaaS platforms. If you're running (or about to launch) a two-sided marketplace, this is worth the 5 minutes.

Read it here:

Learn what a SaaS marketplace agreement should cover: separate buyer and supplier terms, payouts, chargebacks, liability, data rights, and suspension.

08/17/2026

"99.9% uptime" sounds like a promise. It allows about 43 minutes of downtime a month — and that is before you read the exclusions.

Scheduled maintenance. Emergency maintenance. Anything caused by the cloud provider the platform runs on. Those can put a real share of outages outside the commitment altogether.

Our new article covers what to read in a service level agreement before you sign one or send one: how downtime gets defined, what the exclusions cover, how service credits actually work, and what happens if the problem keeps recurring.

Learn how to read an SLA’s uptime definition, downtime exclusions, measurement window, service credits, support tiers, and chronic failure terms.

08/14/2026

Your team is already using AI at work. The question is whether your company decided how — or whether it got decided for you, one paste at a time.

Our new article covers the questions a workplace AI-use policy should answer: approved tools and account types, what information should never be entered, who reviews AI-drafted work before it reaches a customer, and how it all fits with the handbook and confidentiality agreements you already have.

Employees are already using AI tools at work. The questions a workplace AI-use policy should answer — scope, data, review, and enforcement.

08/13/2026

Somewhere in your company's systems is a dataset an AI company would pay for.

The email usually starts the same way: "We'd like to discuss licensing your data." And the first question isn't the price — it's whether your own paperwork supports the deal at all. What did your customer contracts promise? What does your privacy policy say? What terms came attached to the data you got from partners and feeds?

Then the question almost everyone misses: once a model is trained on your data, deleting the dataset may not address what was built from it. What does the agreement say about that?

Our new guide covers the questions to work through — in both directions: licensing your data out, and using customer data for AI features in your own product.

Your company's data has become an asset AI companies want. The license terms — scope, model rights, deletion, consent chain — decide what it's worth.

08/12/2026

"Is this liability cap normal?" is the wrong question.

The better one: if this contract fails in a plausible way, how much of the resulting exposure does it leave with us?

A cap can look reasonable and still sit alongside exclusions that remove the exact losses most likely to matter — lost profits, lost revenue, lost data. And carve-outs cut both ways: a mutual one can expand each side's exposure, not just the other party's.

Our new article covers how to read the cap, the exclusions, and the carve-outs together, plus how Arizona, California, and Texas can differ on whether a limitation holds.

Written for founders and operators who sign these agreements, not just for lawyers.

https://accordshield.com/blog-how-much-should-your-liability-cap-be

General information, not legal advice.

How should a business evaluate a contract’s liability cap? How caps, damages exclusions, carve-outs and governing law work together.

08/11/2026

"Do we need terms of service?"

Most business owners ask it the way they'd ask about a fire extinguisher: is it required, and can we skip it?

That's why the answer usually disappoints. Terms of service aren't a checkbox — they're the contract between your business and the people using it. The real question isn't whether you need one. It's what yours has to cover.

What your product does decides that:

- Do you bill on a recurring basis?
- Do users upload or store content?
- Does your product use AI?
- Do your users buy and sell with each other?

And the one a template can never handle: whether what you actually do still matches what the document says.

Our new article walks through each of them, and where to start.

https://accordshield.com/blog-do-i-need-terms-of-service?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=terms-of-service

General information, not legal advice.

08/11/2026

"Do we need a lawyer on retainer?"

It's a fair question — and the honest answer is often no.

The dividing line isn't how big a company is. It's how often legal questions come up, and whether they can wait for an appointment.

A few signs a business has outgrown calling a lawyer only when something breaks:

- A contract got signed without review because review would have taken too long
- The company can't easily find its own signed agreements
- The same question gets a different answer depending on who you ask
- Hiring started in a new state and nobody checked what changed with it

Our new article walks through all seven — plus when per-matter help is still the right call, and what to ask before engaging anyone.

https://accordshield.com/blog-do-you-need-a-lawyer-on-retainer?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ogc-retainer

General information, not legal advice.

How to decide between per-matter legal help and ongoing counsel, and the signs a business has outgrown calling a lawyer only when something breaks.