Gary Ransone is the founder and managing member of The Contractor’s Legal Kit, LLC. He is licensed in California as an attorney, general contractor and real estate broker and has been involved with various aspects of construction and building since 1980. Gary worked for many years both “in the trenches” and around the construction business, first as a laborer starting in 1980, then carpenter, remodeler, general building contractor and developer. He has been a licensed contractor since 1992 and a licensed attorney since 1989 focused on construction related matters.

His approach to creating the construction agreements and forms in The Contractor’s Legal Kit has always been heavily tempered by a strong dose of job site reality that came from working both as a builder and an attorney for decades. He also litigated construction related cases for decades before numerous courts in California and also worked as a mediator and arbitrator in construction related cases, but his focus has always been working with builders to create countless construction agreements for real world projects.

His publications and speaking engagements have included: author of The Contractor’s Legal Kit, 2023 Digital Edition; author of The Contractor’s Legal Kit, 344 pages, Builderburg Group (1996) and Second Edition (2003); author of numerous articles on construction contracts, construction law and contract administration published in numerous different national builder’s magazines, author of numerous contracts for The Reader’s Digest Guide to Home Improvement with template contracts for owners & contractors; edited Mechanic’s Liens book (1998) by Nolo Press. He’s been a speaker on the topic of construction agreements at numerous national and regional builder’s conferences from San Francisco to the East Coast. 

Your comments and suggestions are welcomed and can be sent through the Connect link on TheContractorslegalkit.com website.

After entering your information into the shopping cart on this site, consenting to the terms of use and purchasing the forms, you will automatically be emailed a zip folder with all the various contracts and forms in Microsoft Word files. After purchasing the forms through the shopping cart on this site, the revised Contractor’s Legal Kit construction agreements and forms will come almost instantly to you via email! Instructions for opening the Contractor’s Legal Kit folder zip folder appear below and also come with the Contractor’s Legal Kit zip folder of forms and are also found on the site in the paragraph below. With the email that contains the zip folder of forms, you will also be emailed a link to a Google file that contains the individual contracts and forms included with the Contractor’s Legal Kit. You may also simply download the files from that Google link if you prefer or if you have any trouble opening the zip folder of forms.

Best practice is to save The Contractor’s Legal Kit zip folder zip folder to your computer before opening The Contractor’s Legal Kit zip folder. Once the zip folder is saved on your computer, on many computers, to open the folder with The Contractor’s Legal Kit forms and Guide, double click on The Contractor’s Legal Kit folder that has been saved to your computer to open and view its contents on your computer. A Windows based computer will open the zip file up, while its still in zip form, and you can pull out individual files, or all files. Many Apple computers should extract all the contents of the zip folder automatically and create a new folder with all of the files inside of it.

Another method to open the files on the zip folder if you are having any issues opening them is for you is to grab the Contractor's Legal Kit zip
folder with your mouse, move it over to your desktop and open the
individual files on your desktop.

On many Windows based computers, you can also right-click The Contractor’s Legal Kit folder (or right-click and drag anywhere) on the zip file and 'extract' the contents. This will create a new folder, with the name of the zip file, with all of the contents of the zip file inside of it.

When you open an individual file in the folder, best practice is to make a copy of the agreement file, rename it according to your specific job, open the new file and click on the “Enable Editing” box above top of form before filling out the agreement for your specific project.

If you are having trouble opening the file, a google docs link to all files was sent to you with the email containing the zip folder when you purchased The Contractor’s Legal Kit and you can access and save the files to your computer through that google docs link.

While very rare, if you can’t open the zip folder, download the forms off the Google link that contains the forms. That link will be sent to you when you purchase the forms and it will contain the zip folder and the Google link to the forms.

Additionally, you can also hit the Contact button at the bottom of any page on this site, indicate the date you purchased the forms and that you’d like them emailed to you due to a problem with a download. We will then email you the individual forms in Microsoft Word format promptly and you can simply put the forms in your own contract folder and the vast majority of word processing programs can read or convert a Microsoft Word file. If you’re not sure your word processing program can read a Word file, you are advised not to buy The Contractor’s Legal Kit unless you want to find a way to convert the Word file to the word processing software program that you are using.

• Short Form Fixed Price Agreement
• Long-Form Fixed Price Agreement
• Time and Materials Agreement
• Cost-Plus-Percentage-Fee Agreement
• Cost-Plus-Fixed-Fee Agreement
• Estimating Agreement & Pre-Construction Services Agreement
• Construction Management Agreement
• Design-Build Preconstruction Services Agreement
• Design-Build Agreement
• Change Order (short form)
• Change Order and Accounting Summary (long form)
• Invoice (short form)
• Invoice and Accounting Summary (long form)
• Short-Form Subcontract Agreement
• Long-Form Subcontract Agreement
• Subcontractor Information Form
• Pre-construction Conference Form
• Ups and Downs of Remodeling Form
• Change Order Contingency Fund Form
• Optional Contract Clause: Material Price Escalation Clause
• Punch List Addendum Form
• Comprehensive User Guide for Agreements and Forms

** Now Includes Comprehensive eBook Legal Kit User Guide **

No, we are not a law firm. Neither the Contractor’s Legal Kit, LLC, Gary Ransone or anyone associated with this site is acting as your lawyer and no attorney/client relationship is established when you purchase forms of this site or read the Resources tab and we are not offering or providing you legal advice by selling forms on this site. The Contractor’s Legal Kit, LLC sells on this site editable construction contracts and forms tailored to the builder and remodeler. The purchaser of the forms fills out the forms and supplements them according to their own unique needs, each specific job and any specific laws of their state that may apply to their business with the assistance of their own attorney as desired. The Contractor’s Legal Kit, LLC is the owner and seller of the construction agreements and forms on this site and operator of this website. You will be acting as your own attorney at all times when using the agreements, Legal Kit eBook User Guide and information available on this site according to the terms of use on this site.

By all means just hit the Get in touch button found on the bottom of any page on this site, ask your question and you’ll typically get a response with 24 hours or less! Or, leave a phone number if you want a call instead in regards to your questions about the contracts and forms on this site.