Set one legal framework for ongoing marketing engagements

A master services agreement is useful when your agency works with the same client across multiple campaigns, retainers or service lines. Rather than renegotiating the core legal terms each time, you set the main rules once and then add project-specific details in a scope, schedule or statement of work. That can make onboarding cleaner and reduce repeated debate about payment terms, ownership, approvals and liability wording. It is especially helpful for agencies offering a mix of strategy, creative, media, SEO, social or campaign management under one broader commercial relationship.

It usually sets the baseline legal terms for the relationship, including how new work is authorised, how fees are charged, when invoices are due, who approves deliverables, and what happens if the scope changes mid-project. It can also deal with ad spend authority, use of subcontractors, access to client accounts, confidentiality, ownership or licensing of creative outputs, and how either side can end the arrangement. For agencies, these points matter because the commercial deal often evolves over time, and the agreement needs to support that without rewriting the whole contract for every campaign.

Important details include whether you work on retainers, fixed-fee campaigns, hourly work or a mix of all three, and whether you provide strategy, content, paid media, SEO, email, design or production services. We also look at who controls ad accounts, whether spend is prepaid or reimbursed, how approvals are recorded, whether subcontractors are involved, and what rights the client needs in the final work. If your agency handles mailing lists, analytics access or customer information, the legal position depends on the way the business handles information in practice, not just the contract wording.

A generic template may be too broad in some areas and too thin in others. Many templates do not properly deal with practical agency issues such as delayed client approvals, campaign dependencies, platform account ownership, ad spend overruns, third-party tools, or the difference between background IP and project deliverables. They also may not fit the way your proposals and statements of work are actually issued. A tailored master agreement is usually more useful when you want one document to support repeat engagements and different service lines, rather than a one-off contract for a single project.

The fixed-fee is for the master services agreement itself. If you also need a separate statement of work template, negotiation support with a client, or detailed advice on a live compliance issue, that may require additional work and separate scoping. The same applies if your client has sent its own contract and wants a mark-up or negotiation process. This page is intentionally narrower than broader advisory work, so the deliverable is the core MSA document rather than ongoing representation or management of the whole contracting process.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Marketing Agency Master Services Agreement service, pricing starts from $2,000.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.