If you are a scientist on your way to sign a consulting contract with a biotechnology or pharmaceutical company, hold on. You should first read Biomedical Consulting Agreements: A Guide for Academics by Edward Klees and H. Robert Horvitz. Even if your contract looks great because you have been offered a great deal of shares or it does not require too much time for you, there may well be a catch. Have you ever heard about antidilution rights? Are you sure you understand the confidentiality obligations or the intellectual property rights?
This book will tell you about all sorts of useful things that you should be looking for before signing a contract. The book is short, to the point, and perfectly organized in small parts to allow you to quickly find an answer to the particular question you have (and even a few questions you don’t).
After reading this book, you may still need to ask advice from a specialist like a lawyer or someone from your university for the more complex cases, but Klees and Horvitz will help you speak the same language and ask the right questions.
However, if you are not about to sign a contract but perhaps are looking for general information about consulting for companies, I do not recommend this book. Biomedical Consulting Agreements will not tell you about relationships between academia and industry or how to get an offer from the business sector.
The book is targeted for someone who is in academia and has, or soon will have, an offer from a company to do some consulting work (from a couple of hours to a lot more). It is intended to help you understand the contract and hopefully help you avoid giving away multi-billion rights from you and your university.