If your company has more than one shareholder, an agreement is highly recommended. One day, the company may separate or be sold, and if there is no agreement, litigation can and is likely to follow. Even when current shareholders have the best terms, things can still turn sour, and it`s not a good idea to leave a grey area when it comes to who gets what. The agreement should be drafted or at least supervised by an experienced lawyer. Your intellectual property is at the heart of your business, so protecting it is paramount. A trademark protects your company`s brand, including your logo, name, slogans and product name. You must exercise due diligence to ensure that you are not infringing the intellectual property of others, and then register one or more federal trademarks. Copyright protects original works – art, writing or software code, to name a few. You may need to apply for copyright protection or licensed copyright for your business. Patents protect inventions, including business methods.

You should talk to a lawyer about whether you need to apply for a patent. The right lawyer can streamline a lengthy filing process and handle the important steps and details of the intellectual property protection process. These guidelines are useful for disciplinary matters, overtime and terminations. But here too, a business lawyer will make sure you have the proper documents. The lack of a structure to ensure compliance is an increasingly troubling issue for most business owners. Just like with taxes and financial frameworks, it`s a never-ending battle for small and medium-sized businesses to ensure they are always 100% compliant with all legal requirements, regardless of the size of their legal teams. Keep track of your books! Tax issues can be detrimental to small businesses. Make sure you`re “in the green” when it comes to invoices, receipts, books, contracts, books, and all your legal documents or documents. For this reason, it can be helpful to be aware of the most common legal issues that businesses, especially small businesses, often face. Here, we`ll discuss some of the most common legal issues that small businesses face so you`re better prepared to avoid them altogether. Making sure your business is well structured, your employees are hired properly, and your contracts are legally sound is a good start.

Your lawyer can help you with the rest. Sound legal counsel can protect you and your business to foster a better future with fewer legal complications. If you`re looking for legal advice for small businesses, here are the top 10 legal questions every small business owner faces. Again, you can choose to address these concerns yourself or download Internet documents. But you owe it to yourself and the well-being of your business to consult and work with a business lawyer near a reputable law firm that understands the laws of the PA. Forbes. Top 10 legal mistakes made by small businesses. www.forbes.com/sites/aileron/2014/07/02/top-10-legal-mistakes-small-businesses-make/#6547c45c242f Many small businesses start with someone making something or providing a service, often from home. As the business grows, it becomes necessary to hire employees. A common mistake made by new small business or business owners is hiring employees with an informal verbal agreement (or handshake).

Talk to a labor lawyer about the specifics of your small business to make sure you`re covered by rock-solid employee agreements that avoid legal trouble. If setting up a trust is not feasible or desirable, it`s always crucial to separate yourself and your personal information from your small business. Your small business should have a separate bank account, credit cards, etc. There are a variety of different structures under which a small business can be established. These include partnerships, corporations, sole proprietorships and limited liability companies (LLCs). For example, if a small business is incorporated as a sole proprietorship, the owner`s personal property (which includes the business itself) is at risk if the business is continued. Small businesses and startups are often successful with amazing ideas. Some of the best products, marketing strategies, and unique concepts come from small businesses. However, small businesses are notorious for not acquiring the appropriate trademarks, patents, or copyrights to protect their intellectual property.

Sometimes their best original ideas are stolen or hurt without them being able to legally do anything about it. It`s no secret that small and medium-sized businesses were hit the hardest last year, with the Covid-19 crisis crashing one company after another. It might even be considered the worst to hit companies hard in modern history. With more than two decades of small-scale law practice, the Briggs Law Corporation team has seen almost every trick in the book. We have built a lifetime of experience in protecting our customers and their small businesses. By relying on ourselves, we can help you successfully travel through the rocky shallows of the controversial business world. When a business needs legal advice, it often lacks an appropriate system and procedures to review and compare different types of legal service providers. Your lawyer can also help you if something happens to sue you or your business.

Before hiring your first employee, you should hire a lawyer to help you with taxes, paperwork, and other business decisions. This way, your lawyer can help you determine which business structure you should choose for tax purposes, give you legal advice on business licenses, and help you draft employment contracts. “What are the most important legal issues that small and medium-sized businesses will face in the coming years?” Small businesses often come up with great ideas, products, and marketing plans. However, not patenting, labeling or protecting them by copyright means that another company can step in and claim them. Often, it`s the unique ideas and products that make a small business so attractive and attract customers. We are quite comfortable with the laws that govern our daily lives – don`t accelerate, don`t fly, don`t attack anyone – they`re intuitive and we don`t think much about it. But business law is different. For one, most of us don`t grow up knowing how to put it into practice and stick to it.

It`s also more complicated and less intuitive than the laws we deal with every day. That`s why it`s important to get legal advice for small businesses from a qualified person: a business lawyer. This is a problem you can control yourself. Don`t rush into a lawsuit, as that means paying legal fees, and as you can probably guess, these can add up quickly. If you find a way to negotiate and resolve a dispute amicably, it may be wise to consider this option. The legal framework is based on requirements, most of which are not easily applicable (or verifiable). This often leads to massive audits that can reveal different types of backdated errors for many years. There you go; The above are some of the most common legal issues that businesses in the United States face. It is important to clarify that this article is not intended to give you legal advice. Your business lawyer can help! To learn more about how we can help your business, visit our website or call today to schedule an appointment with one of our business lawyers. This happens to many companies.

You hire someone you think is more qualified than they actually are, and you quickly realize that you`ll lose money if you keep them. Or you may find that they simply don`t match the rest of your employees and hurt the productivity and morale of the entire team. You can reduce your chances of legal action if you take the right precautions before firing someone.2 This starts with formulating terms and conditions of employment in an employee handbook and documenting any disciplinary action in which the employee is involved. If there are any doubts about what you should do, it`s worth consulting your lawyer. Interestingly, depending on the size of your business, you are more likely to face certain legal issues that require the help of lawyers or business lawyers in your area. Here`s what a Kingston University study found about the legal needs of small businesses: While raising capital as a small and medium-sized business may seem easier than ever, compliance costs can be prohibitive. A typical Settlement A offering requires lawyers, CPAs, accountants (for Level 2 offerings), a licensed broker-dealer, and various I/R individuals to optimize investors. Given the increased importance of marketing and awareness during the pandemic, the use and implementation of brands is critical today. Trademarks protect the company`s name and subsequent brand image as well as protection against counterfeiting.

No matter the size of your business or the number of customers, your small business has a legal obligation to protect the personal cyber information of customers and employees. Up-to-date antivirus measures and security software can help protect this valuable information from theft. Let me say it again: 90% of the world`s business population is small and medium-sized enterprise. Small businesses face many challenges, especially in an economic climate ravaged by the pandemic – many stores have closed in the last two years.