Master service agreement

The overarching legal contract between an agency and a client that governs the general terms of the relationship — payment terms, liability, IP, confidentiality — under which individual statements of work are executed.

Example

An agency signs one MSA with a client covering the full relationship, then executes three separate SOWs under it over a year — one for a rebrand, one for a website, one for an ongoing content retainer — each defining its own specific scope.

Why it matters for agencies

Splitting the relationship into an MSA (terms) plus SOWs (scope, per project) is what lets an agency add or change individual engagements without renegotiating the whole legal relationship every time. Confusing the two — putting scope language only in the MSA, or legal terms only in the SOW — is a common source of ambiguity.