If you’re the CEO or entrepreneur of a business start-up, there will be a million and one things you have to consider and think about; lucky you. It’s a very stressful time in your life when you start a business, as for the first few years there is a lot of uncertainty and guess work. As well as the trillion other things that are going to be on your mind and making you lose sleep, you also need to be considering the legal side of your business. If you have a new business you should really get yourself a lawyer and here’s why.
Advisory Role
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that you probably don’t have a law degree hidden away in your drawer and so you will need a lawyer for the one simple reason that you are going to need to ask for help and guidance with the legal side of your business. The decisions obviously rest with you and so you don’t always need a lawyer, but you’ll find without one you might end up making decisions that massively affect your business in a very negative and potentially catastrophic way.
Intellectual Property
Chances are you will have intellectual property that might be your most important asset as a company and you are going to seriously need to think about keeping it safe. The only person for that job is a lawyer. You’ll need to protect trade secrets with the help of nondisclosure agreements as well as defend trademarks and sort out copyright and patents. You’ll also have to avoid infringements and draft license agreements. The whole thing is a legal minefield and like I said earlier, you’re no lawyer, so make sure you have one in your corner.
Tax
And talking about minefields, tax is the biggest one of them all. Just sorting your own personal tax can be a massive issue, let alone when you’re running a business. You can’t effectively manage tax and avoid the main pitfalls without a trained lawyer there to help out. There are so many issues and if you’re not careful you will end up violating tax laws which will turn into one costly headache for you and your business. Let the lawyer handle it.
Contracts
Employees are a necessary evil and I’m sure if you had the time and energy to do everything in your business you would, but I’m assuming you can’t and so here come the employees and their rights. Now I’m not saying that employees should have rights, but they do have a lot of them and if you’re not careful the full force of the legal system will come down on you if their rights are infringed. A lawyer can build up the contracts to make them water tight, but make sure you know them inside and out too, otherwise a wily employee could catch you out. Your lawyer will need to understand the various different areas of law, such as healthcare too. However, you need to remember that your lawyer is for your business and not your employees, and so if they have an issue along the healthcare law lines, they will need to find their own health law and policy specialists.
And those are the main reasons why you need a sharp as a razor lawyer fighting your legal battles for you.