It really depends on your personal situation and how much. If you're in the U.S., you'll have to check to see the min/max for suits in small claims court (this is generally anywhere from $3,000-$15,000). One thing that works, though, is merely having your lawyer draft a letter to the offending client. Your less intelligent clients will jump when they see any threat of legal action (and for you, it's only a few hundred bucks to get a lawyer to draft a letter – maybe even free depending on your relationship). There's certainly leg work involved, but when it's your livelihood, you have to do what you can.
Granted incredibly unlikely, but doesn't that open the possibility of:
* Rip off developer
* Hire incredibly expensive legal team/legal buddy[1] to find small enough loophole in contract
* Bill developer for cost of legal as well as rip them off
* Profit?
[1] How do jurisdictions that auto-award costs handle contingency claims? Is "£0 if I lose, or £1M/hour if we win" a legitimate billing rate? I can't imagine it could be.
I used to work for a company that put a late-payment clause right in the contract. If you didn't pay us you were on the hook for a fee plus interest on the outstanding balance. So essentially it was like owing money to the IRS.
As far as I know nobody ever gave us trouble about payment.
> I used to work for a company that put a late-payment clause right in the contract. If you didn't pay us you were on the hook for a fee plus interest on the outstanding balance.
This is so common in the business world -- terms -- that there's a short hand minilanguage for describing your terms on invoices, purchase orders and contracts.
