Know your book's legal risk before it ships.
Pre-publication legal review and manuscript vetting for memoirists, nonfiction authors, novelists writing from real life, and business owners. Flat-fee Clearance: $9,500 for books with elevated legal risk, $6,500 for standard risk.
Manuscript clearance for authors with something at stake. A trained editor reads every page and flags what could create legal risk. Then a former publishing general counsel goes through every page, reviews every flag for defamation, privacy, right of publicity, and contract landmines, and hands you the legal read and your options in plain English.
The consultation is free, and our pricing is published.
What is manuscript clearance? Manuscript clearance, also called pre-publication legal review or vetting, is a legal review of a book before publication for defamation and libel, invasion of privacy including public disclosure of private facts, false light, right of publicity, and conflicts with your own contracts. At Muller Media Law, Clearance costs $9,500 for books with elevated legal risk or up to 100,000 words, or $6,500 for standard-risk books up to 70,000 words; larger or more complex books are quoted in writing, typically from $12,500, and a Risk Review, which identifies the risks without clearing the book, costs $5,000 or $6,500, and the full fee counts toward Clearance if you upgrade within 60 days. Your price, start date, and anticipated delivery date are confirmed in writing when you sign.
How every review works
Every page read. Every flag reviewed by a lawyer.
The editor's read
A trained editor reads every page of your manuscript and flags anything that could create legal risk, using our written flagging standards.
The attorney's review
With Clearance, I go through every page myself, checking for anything the flags missed, and slow down at every flag. With a Risk Review, I review every flag and read the manuscript wherever the context calls for it. Either way, I make every legal judgment myself.
We may use AI-assisted tools to help organize and analyze your manuscript, under my supervision and on terms that don't allow it to be used for training. Your engagement agreement says so in writing.
The chapter you keep rereading
You wrote the book to grow your business. It books the keynotes. It sits in the lobby. It turns "who are you" into "I read your book" before the meeting starts. And real money is already in it, the ghostwriter, the editor, the publicist waiting on a launch date, money the book pays back in clients and stages, never in royalties.
Which is why you keep rereading one chapter at 11pm. The partner you bought out. The former employer. The deal that went sideways. It's true, it's the best chapter in the book, and a small voice keeps asking what happens if he reads it too.
You're right to hear that voice. A demand letter can freeze a launch over a weak claim. A lawsuit becomes the Google result that outranks the book. And the settlement you signed six years ago may have an opinion about chapter seven that nobody on your book team is qualified to catch, because your book team are storytellers, and this is a legal problem wearing a story's clothes.
The fix was never cutting the chapter. The hard chapters are why anyone will talk about this book. The fix is clearing them.
Reviewed by the lawyer who'd otherwise sue you
Here's what makes this review different, and I'll say it plainly. I'm a plaintiff's trial lawyer, and the cases I try are personal injury cases. Finding the needle in a haystack worth suing over is part of my job.
I review your manuscript the way opposing counsel will: hunting for the identifiable person, the provable-false assertion, the private fact, the paragraph a jury would circle. Then I flag what I find and show you the ways through.
The risks hiding in your manuscript are torts. A tort is a civil wrong, an injury one person inflicts on another that the law remedies with money damages, and defamation, invasion of privacy, and misappropriation all live in that family, right alongside the personal injury cases I try. Manuscript clearance and injury work are the same body of law seen from two sides. One side answers injuries after they happen. This side works to prevent them.
Before that, I spent years as general counsel inside a US publishing company with global reach, on the other side of the desk, deciding which manuscripts the house would touch and watching launches freeze when legal found problems late. I know what your publisher's lawyers will flag because I asked their questions for a living.
Attack-side eyes. House-side experience. Your manuscript gets both.
Guy Muller, Attorney at Law. Texas Bar No. 24098151. Former General Counsel, Greenleaf Book Group.
Hear the approach before you pay for it
Greenleaf Book Group is a leading hybrid publisher of business books and prescriptive nonfiction, and I was its General Counsel. While I held that role they had me on their podcast twice as a guest, once on legal risk in publishing and once on AI and copyright. Both episodes are below, free, so you can hear how I think about a manuscript before you ever pay me a dollar.
Then read the work: What You Can and Can't Say, a seven-part legal guide for writers, written free, with the cases cited.
What you get
Every review starts with the page-by-page review. Clearance and Clearance+ add everything after it.
The Page-by-Page Review.
A trained editor reads every page of your manuscript and flags anything that could create legal risk. With Clearance, I go through every page myself, checking for anything the flags missed, and review every flag for defamation and libel, invasion of privacy including public disclosure of private facts, false light, right of publicity, whether disguised people can still be recognized, and the risk that rarely gets checked: conflicts with agreements you’ve already signed. NDAs from a company sale. Non-disparagement clauses from a settlement. The paragraph you skimmed six years ago. The review also flags quoted material, such as lyrics, poems, excerpts, and images, that may need permission. Securing permissions and copyright or trademark clearance are quoted separately.
The Gameplan.
Every risk we flag, in plain English: why it matters and exactly what to change, in the order you'll meet it in the manuscript. The same notes sit right on your pages, with suggested language where it helps and release templates where you need them. It's your book and your voice: I show you the risk and the ways through it, and you choose the words.
One follow-up review, included.
Send your revisions within 30 days of delivery. I’ll review them and confirm what’s resolved.
The Clearance Letter.
After the follow-up review, a letter describing the review we did, written for you to share with your publisher, printer, distributor, or insurer.
The Claim Response Call.
If you receive a legal threat about the book within 12 months after it’s published, your first consultation with me is free. If it’s serious, I’ll help you find the right media defense counsel. The choice of counsel is always yours.
Reviewed against national standards.
Your book ships to fifty states, and the people in it can live anywhere. So flagged passages are reviewed against national standards: the U.S. Constitution and the strictest rules that could apply anywhere in the country. If your book needs advice on one state’s specific law, I’ll tell you and help you find local counsel.
Pricing
Clearance
$6,500
Standard-risk manuscripts only, up to 70,000 words.
Standard risk looks like a leadership or business book built on your own career, a memoir where family, friends, and colleagues appear without being accused of wrongdoing, or a how-to book with real-life anecdotes.
Elevated-risk books are Clearance+, even under 70,000 words. See what counts as elevated risk.
Recommended
Clearance+
$9,500
Elevated-risk books up to 100,000 words, or any book from 70,001 to 100,000 words.
Same deliverables as Clearance, for books that accuse identifiable people of serious misconduct, draw on court records or settlements, or turn real people into fiction.
Custom
From $12,500
Quoted in writing.
Manuscripts over 100,000 words, more than one elevated-risk factor, or heavy document review.
Not ready for full clearance? Start with a Risk Review.
$5,000 for standard-risk manuscripts up to 70,000 words, or $6,500 for longer manuscripts up to 100,000 words or elevated risk. You get the editor's read of every page and my review of every flag, with the results in a plain-English Findings Letter and a walkthrough call of up to one hour. It tells you what's risky and what to fix first, and it doesn't clear the book. Upgrade to Clearance within 60 days and the full fee counts toward it.
Add-ons, always quoted before any work begins: Releases and Permissions, Done for You, quoted as a flat fee; priority scheduling, +25%, when the calendar allows; publishing contract review, quoted separately. Permission fees charged by rights holders are always yours, never marked up, and disclosed before they're incurred.
Two payments: half when you sign and half when your review is complete. Or pay in full when you sign and save 5%. Your payment sits in our client trust account and is earned in stages as the work is done. If you end the engagement before your deliverables are complete, you get back whatever hasn't been earned. Pay-over-time financing may be available through LawPay, subject to approval and LawPay's terms.
Every fee published here is our fee for the legal work itself, not for anything a third party charges. Licensing and permission fees set by rights holders are separate, remain your responsibility, and are disclosed to you before they are incurred.
Published rates are our standard rates for the scopes they describe. They're an invitation to talk, never an offer of representation. Every engagement starts with a conflicts check and a written scope confirmation, and no attorney-client relationship exists until we both sign the engagement agreement and the first installment is paid. Projects outside a defined scope, longer manuscripts, more complex risk profiles, or high volumes of permissions, releases, or images, receive a written quote before you decide anything.
Dates in writing.
We set your start date and anticipated delivery date together after your consultation, based on your manuscript's length and risk and your launch plans, and confirm them in writing when you sign. Releases and permissions run through other people's lawyers and rights holders, so the Gameplan puts them in order and tells you which to start first.
The consultation is free. Half the fee is due when you sign, half when your review is complete.
How I work
On copyright and permissions. Every review flags quoted or borrowed material, such as lyrics, poems, excerpts, and images, that may need permission. Most publishers' editors handle permissions as part of editing and escalate the hard calls to a lawyer. If you're publishing without that support, or your book has complex copyright questions, I'm glad to take that work on for a fee we quote and agree at the start. My core review focuses where legal analysis matters most: defamation, invasion of privacy, and disclosure of confidential or private information. I don't sell work you don't need. If we're not the right fit, I'll tell you, and I'll try to point you to who is.
One more thing about how I work. I don't rewrite your book, and you wouldn't want me to. You get the legal read, the options, and sample language to react to where it's useful, and creative control stays exactly where it belongs, with you. The hard chapters stay yours.
In writing, before you sign
Your engagement agreement spells out, in plain English, the price, the scope, what you'll receive, and how your dates and payments work. You'll see all of it before you sign.
- Fee
- Flat, quoted in writing before you sign
- Dates
- Start date and anticipated delivery date, confirmed in writing when you sign
- Follow-up review
- One round within 30 days, in Clearance tiers
- Where it lives
- In your engagement agreement
What no lawyer can guarantee, and I won't: outcomes. Anyone can file anything, and no review can promise that a publisher or platform will accept a book. What I commit to is the work: every flag reviewed, every credible risk named, your options laid out, and everything documented. A review lowers the odds that a claim succeeds and records the care you took before publishing.
The objections
"My publisher's lawyers review it anyway."
They do, for the publisher. Read your indemnification clause to see who pays when it goes wrong. Their review protects the house. Mine protects you, and gets you through theirs faster, because the manuscript arrives with the questions already answered.
"I'll run it through AI myself."
Here's what you'd give up. What you type into a consumer chatbot about the risky parts of your book is generally not privileged, may be discoverable, and could be used to argue you knew about a risk and published anyway. A chatbot also doesn't know your contracts or the people you wrote about. When I use technology, it runs under my supervision, on terms that don't allow your manuscript to be used for training, and I make every legal judgment myself. Read the full answer.
"Truth is a defense."
Truth you can prove is a defense. Truth you remember is a deposition. And truth defends only defamation; it does nothing for privacy claims, where the complaint is that the true thing was private. Provable and organized wins. That's why your Gameplan names the documents that back up each statement you keep.
Questions authors ask
- How much does a manuscript legal review cost?
- At Muller Media Law, a book with elevated legal risk is Clearance+, $9,500 flat for manuscripts up to 100,000 words. Elevated risk means the book accuses an identifiable living person of a crime or serious misconduct, is fiction closely based on recognizable real people, draws on court records, discovery, settlements, or restrictive agreements, involves minors or sexual content about real people, or writes about someone known to sue. A standard-risk manuscript up to 70,000 words is Clearance, $6,500. Larger or more complex books are quoted in writing, typically from $12,500. Authors who want to know the risks before committing to full clearance can start with a Risk Review: $5,000 for standard-risk manuscripts up to 70,000 words, or $6,500 for longer or elevated-risk manuscripts up to 100,000 words, with the full fee credited toward Clearance within 60 days. See pricing for what each option includes.
- What does a legal review of a memoir cost?
- A memoir is priced by its risk and length. A memoir that accuses an identifiable living person of a crime or serious misconduct, draws on court records, discovery or settlements, or writes about someone known to sue is elevated risk: Clearance+, $9,500 flat up to 100,000 words. A memoir without those factors, up to 70,000 words, is Clearance, $6,500. With two or more elevated-risk factors, the price is quoted in writing, typically from $12,500. See pricing for what each option includes.
- Can I be sued for writing about real people in my memoir?
- Anyone can file a suit, which is exactly why review exists before publication. The realistic risks are defamation, invasion of privacy, and misidentification, and each has known mitigations: substantiation, revision, releases, and documented composites. Clearance applies those mitigations so a claim that does get filed has less to stand on. The factors that decide who is safe to write about are in Why you can write about some people and not others.
- Do publishers require a legal review?
- Traditional and hybrid publishers run their own legal review of risky nonfiction, and their review protects the publisher, whose contract almost always makes the author indemnify the house. Arriving with your own review done, and a Clearance Letter you can share, protects you and can shorten their review.
- How long does pre-publication review take?
- It depends on the manuscript’s length and risk. We set your start date and anticipated delivery date together after your consultation and confirm them in writing when you sign, so you can plan your launch around them. Releases and permissions run on other people’s schedules, so the Gameplan puts them in order and flags the ones to start first.
- What does a manuscript review check for?
- Defamation and libel, invasion of privacy including public disclosure of private facts, false light, right of publicity, identifiability of disguised people across the whole book, and conflicts with the author’s own agreements: NDAs, settlements, non-disparagement clauses, and divorce decrees. The review also flags quoted material, such as lyrics, poems, excerpts, and images, that may need permission. Securing permissions, and copyright or trademark clearance, are quoted separately.
- Does a lawyer read my whole manuscript?
- On Clearance, every page gets two passes. A trained editor reads every page closely and flags anything that could create legal risk, using our written flagging standards. Then I go through every page myself, checking for anything the flags missed, and slow down at every flag to make the legal call. A Risk Review includes the editor’s read and my review of every flag, without my pass over every page.
- Can I just run my manuscript through AI myself?
- You can. Here’s why it carries risks that don’t apply when your lawyer uses technology on your behalf. 1) Privilege. What you type into a consumer chatbot about the risky parts of your book is generally not privileged and may be discoverable if you’re ever sued. Work your lawyer does to advise you, including with technology, is protected as far as the law allows. 2) The record it leaves. A chat log asking “could I get sued over chapter seven?” followed by publishing chapter seven unchanged could be used to argue you knew about a risk and published anyway. 3) Judgment. A chatbot doesn’t know your contracts, the people you wrote about, or how a court where they live would treat a given passage. It can sound certain and still be wrong, even about the law it cites. 4) Accountability. No one answers for a chatbot’s advice, and depending on your settings, what you paste in may be stored or used to train the model. When I use technology, it runs under my supervision, on terms that don’t allow your manuscript to be used for training, and I make every legal judgment myself.
- Does a legal review guarantee I won’t be sued?
- No review can prevent a filing, and any provider claiming otherwise is misleading you. What clearance does is reduce a claimant’s likelihood of success and document your diligence, which matters directly to what a plaintiff must prove.
The date you announce should be the date it ships. The chapters that scare you should be the ones that sell it.
Know the risk before you publish.
For the ones with a story to tell.