Coaching and Law
Coaching and the law are often overlooked by life, personal, business coaches and NLP practitioners.
Coaching Company Establishment and the Law:
1. Prior to establishing and registering your coaching company, do your research as to what type of legal entity (type of company) you should be. There are so many different forms from limited liability, sole proprietorship, profit, non-profit etc. What you should do depends on your local and country laws. Reason why is one you have legally established your company it is hard to change. There are pro’s and cons to each type of legal entity, in terms of liability, responsibility, obligations, tax etc.
Coaching Agreement:
2. Make sure that each of your clients signs an agreement. You want to protect your rights as well as that of your clients. At minimum it should cover liability, confidentiality. It could cover what happens during cancellation etc. A good place to get this type of information is legal websites local to your state/country, chamber of commerce, other coaches. Be sure when you use ready made agreements, they apply to your country/state/type of business.
Coaching and the Law General
3. Work by the rule of thumb: “If you think it can potentially legallly gets you in trouble, it probably eventually will.” Honesty is the best policy.
4. Though easy and tempting to do. Do not work under the table. You’d be surprised how many of your clients end up filing your coaching in their taxes. Even though it may not even be tax deductible. In addition, clients refer other clients, before you know it the majority if your customer base pays you under the table.
Coaching, Law, Titles and Therapy
5. Be careful of the word “therapy”, in some states the practice of “hypnotism” for therapeutic purposes is strictly to licensed healthcare professional. Though you could refer to providing NLP therapy, I’d still check your local laws on this. You also always have to ask yourself, even though something is legally allowed, are you representing yourself in an honest way? Are you clients seeing, who they think they are seeing.
6. If you are a hypnotist, and not a hypnotherapist. Don’t call yourself a hypnotherapist. Some training companies offer short trainings to become a hypnotherapist or even a clinical hypnotherapist, these names are open game. However, these training companies license you to misrepresent yourself. It doesn’t matter what you call yourself, it matters what your client things.
7. And if you create an illusion of being a hypnotherapist with years of training, or even a medical degree, you are setting yourself up for trouble.
8. If you are not a psychologist or a psychotherapist. Then don’t create the illusion that you do.
Coaching, Law and Keeping Records
9. Keep records, and check if your local law requires you to do so. We recommend that you do at all times anyway. Provide your client with progress reports to avoid false claims.
Coaching, Law and Referals
10. It is wise to refer medical problems on to a physician, don’t discourage rather encourage the client to get the best (medical) treatment they can get. This doesn’t mean you can not coach them at all, though in case of mental health, it would be wise to dialogue with the mental health care professionals of your client.
11. It is best to always have a referral for a client under a physicians care signed by the client’s physician. This ensures that you do not intend to replace medical care with coaching or therapy and is also a way of gaining the confidence and respect of the health care community as a whole.
12. Make sure you are not liable for what the people you refer your clients to do. Put this in the agreement with your client.
Coaching, Law, Insurance
13. Insure yourself for claims if you can. Check thoroughly if based on what you do, your insurance company will pay if anything were to occur. Some insurance companies will not cover coaching, NLP or hypnosis. So choose carefully.
Coaching, Law, Confidentiality
14. If you do not keep confidentiality or behave unethically you can be sued!
Coaching, Law and Ethics are covered in our Master Practitioner and Life Coaching course, upcoming training in:
NLP Training and Life Coach Training
More about coaching and law soon….
