Expert agreement

1. Who this agreement is between

Lemons Ltd, registered in England and Wales under company number 17355768, operating the blue lemons platform at bluelemons.co.uk (“we”, “us”), and you, the expert joining the platform.

2. The relationship

You are an independent professional, not our employee, agent, or partner. You choose your own rate and availability. Neither of us is obliged to offer or accept any engagement, and nothing here creates an expectation of ongoing work.

3. What we do, and what it costs

We give clients a place to find you, run the booking and payment infrastructure, and vet everyone on the platform. We charge a 15% platform fee on each completed booking; you keep 85%. Clients pay no booking fee.

Your rate is set by you as the price of a 60-minute first conversation, and you can change it at any time. First conversations are always a full hour.

4. Payment, cancelling and moving a call

Clients pay through the platform (processed by Stripe) when they book, and the money is held securely until the call has taken place. Your share, less the platform fee, is released to you automatically 48 hours after the call, which leaves a short window for either side to raise a problem.

Up to 48 hours before a call, a client can cancel for a full refund, or move it to another time.

Inside 48 hours, a booking cannot be cancelled and the fee is owed to you. You have held that hour. A client may ask to move the call once, and whether you accept is entirely your decision. If you accept, the call moves to the new time and nothing is charged again. If you would rather not, the booking stands and you are paid in full.

If you do not attend a booked call, the client is refunded in full, automatically.

5. Confidentiality

Everything a client shares with you before or during a call, including the written brief, is confidential. You will use it only for that engagement, not share it with anyone, and not use it for your own or anyone else's benefit. This obligation continues after you leave the platform.

If a client asks you to sign their own NDA for a booking, that NDA sits alongside this clause, not instead of it.

6. The video call

Calls take place on the video link we provide with each booking, and you agree to use that link rather than another tool.

We do not record calls. blue lemons has no recording of what is said, and no access to one.

You may record a call only where the client has clearly agreed beforehand, and the same applies to them. Any recording either of you makes is confidential in exactly the way the rest of this agreement describes: use it only for that engagement, do not share it with anyone else, and delete it once it is no longer needed.

If a complaint or a dispute is raised about a call, we may ask you and the client whether either of you holds a recording. Sharing it is voluntary. Where one exists, it is usually the fastest way for us to understand what actually happened, and the fairest way for us to support whoever is in the right.

7. Your profile content and intellectual property

You confirm that any content you provide for your profile, including your biography, photograph, and any other materials, is either your own original work or you hold the necessary rights and permissions to use it. You agree not to submit content that infringes the intellectual property rights of any third party, and you agree to indemnify Lemons Ltd against any claim arising from a breach of this confirmation.

8. Conduct

Calls are professional advisory conversations. You will be honest about your experience, prepared for each call, and treat clients with respect. Harassment, discrimination, or any unlawful conduct ends the engagement and, at our discretion, your place on the platform. You are free to end any call where a client behaves this way, and you will be paid for it.

blue lemons handles paid advisory calls, and nothing else. If a client you met here asks you for work we do not offer, a project, a retainer, or an interim or fractional role, that work is yours. Take it with our blessing. There is no fee, nothing to declare, and no permission to seek. We would love to hear about it, but only because it is the whole point of what we are building.

What we do ask is this. Where a client wants more of the same, more advisory calls, keep booking them through blue lemons rather than moving them off the platform to avoid our 15%. After 12 months of a client engaging you through the platform, even that stops applying, and they may book you directly at no charge.

9. Removal from the platform

We may pause or remove your profile if this agreement is breached, if you materially misrepresent your experience, if client complaints are upheld after we have heard both sides, or if you are unresponsive for an extended period. We will give notice and reasons where possible. Removal does not cancel confirmed bookings unless we both agree, and does not affect payment for calls already delivered.

10. Advice and liability

You share experience and judgement, not regulated professional services, and clients are told this. You are responsible for what you say on your calls. You are not responsible for the decisions a client takes afterwards, or for how those decisions turn out: those remain the client's own. We are not a party to the call itself.

If a client or anyone else brings a claim against us because of what you said or did on a call, or because you have broken this agreement, you agree to cover the losses, costs and reasonable legal fees we incur as a result. This does not apply to anything caused by our own negligence or our own breach of this agreement, and it does not apply where we have settled a claim without asking you first. We will tell you promptly about any such claim and give you a fair chance to be involved in how it is handled.

There is a limit on what you can be asked to pay. Except in the cases in the next paragraph, the most you can owe us under this clause is the greater of two figures: the total fees you have received through blue lemons in the twelve months before the claim was made, or whatever is actually payable under any professional indemnity insurance you hold that covers the call in question. If you hold no such insurance, the twelve-month fees figure is the limit.

That limit does not apply to fraud or dishonesty, to a deliberate or reckless breach of this agreement, or to any liability that cannot lawfully be limited, which includes death or personal injury caused by negligence.

11. Leaving

You can leave the platform at any time by telling us; we will unpublish your profile promptly. Confirmed bookings are either honoured or cancelled with a full refund to the client. The clauses on confidentiality, your profile content, liability and indemnity survive.

12. Governing law

This agreement is governed by the laws of England and Wales.