Choosing to start or even running a continued business involves more than just making profit. Not only do you have to acquire customers or manage staff, you also need to have a solid understanding of the legal landscape. Working with a business lawyer can help protect your business from risk while ensuring compliance with applicable laws.
Many small to mid sized business owners wait until something goes wrong before they consider legal support, but really, you should be considering it much earlier than possible. That’s where having a legal team on your side becomes an essential thing to have. Whether you’re launching a start up or managing an established company, access to sound legal advice can make or break your business.
Let’s Take a Look at 10 Very Important Reasons That Your Business Needs a Lawyer:
1. To Help You Choose Your Business Structure and Formation
Picking the right legal structure is one of the most important decisions that you’ll ever make when starting a business. There are options from an LLC to a corporation or even a sole proprietorship. Lawyers can advise you on the best format based on your goals, liabilities, and tax considerations. They ensure that your formation documents are correctly filed and comply with state and federal requirements. This prevents problems down the road.
2. For Contract Drafting and Review
At the heart of almost every business relationship, there are contracts. These can be with customers, vendors, employees or partners, and a lawyer will ensure that your contracts are legally sound, clear to read and enforceable. They can also review any agreements before you sign them, helping you to identify red flags or unfair terms that may have gone unnoticed otherwise. You don’t want to skip this step and expose your business to litigation or financial loss.
3. Property Protection
Your brand, logo, inventions and proprietary processes represent valuable assets to your business. A business lawyer can help you to secure your copyrights, trademarks and patents, while also advising you on how to protect trade secrets. Without proper legal protections, competitors or bad actors could steal your IP, leaving you with little recourse. That’s where a business lawyer can also help you to defend your rights if an infringement occurs.
4. Employment Law Compliance
Hiring employees or working with independent contractors introduces you to a complex web of legal obligations. From drafting employment contracts to offer letters, workplace safety standards and anti discrimination rules, your business has to follow a wide range of federal and state labour laws. A lawyer can work with you to navigate this landscape, reducing the risk of lawsuits and penalties.
5. Avoiding and Managing Lawsuits
Even with the best of precautions, businesses can still be sued. It may be a disgruntled employee, a dissatisfied customer, or a contractor dispute. Having a business lawyer already familiar with your operations allows for a faster and more effective response. Legal advice from a business lawyer can prevent many lawsuits from happening in the first place by spotting risks that occur that you haven’t seen.
6. To Assist You With Tax Strategies and Compliance
While you may have a CPA handling your bookkeeping or your annual returns, a lawyer plays a key role in your tax strategy and dispute resolution. They can help you to interpret tax law, structure deals in a tax efficient way, and respond to audits or investigations from the IRS or local tax authorities. There are some businesses out there that face major penalties simply from misunderstanding tax obligations, something an experienced legal team can help avoid.
7. Understanding Regulations in Your Industry
Every single industry has its own set of rules, and whether you’re in finance, healthcare or e-commerce, these rules can and do often change. If you don’t comply with these rules, they can carry severe penalties. Lawyers who understand the regulatory landscape in your field can help to ensure that you’re meeting your obligations and keeping proper records. They’ll also help you with licensing permits and disclosures required by government agencies.
8. Mergers and Acquisitions
Are you planning to buy another company or merger with a competitor? Lawyers play a critical role in due diligence, negotiating terms, drafting contracts and minimising risks. A poorly structured deal can result in financial loss, tax headaches or even lawsuits. Lawyers can ensure that the transaction itself is sound, underlined with your financial goals.
9. Real Estate and Leasing Agreements
Most businesses operate out of physical premises where the rented, leased or owned commercial real estate deals involve complex legal terms that can affect your rights, costs and ability to operate. A lawyer can work with you to negotiate lease terms, review zoning regulations and resolve landlord disputes. This will help to prevent costly problems like being evicted over paying or being locked into an unfavorable long term agreement.
10. For Building Business Resilience
Beyond those individual issues, having a trusted lawyer can help your business to become more resilient overall. They’ll provide you with ongoing legal audits, help to manage your risks, and ensure that you’re staying compliant as your business evolves. As your legal team becomes more familiar with your operations, they can offer strategic advice tailored to your long term vision. This then becomes a partnership that can be especially valuable when navigating uncharted territory or rapid growth.
Legal challenges can and do arise unexpectedly and have serious consequences for your business. Whether it’s protecting your intellectual property, avoiding employment disputes, or navigating a high stakes deal, having that access to knowledgeable legal support is a smart investment that you need. Some businesses choose to rely on ad hoc legal advice, but it’s much better to have a legal team that understands what your business does and how it works. You don’t necessarily have to have in-house counsel to reap these benefits either, because many businesses today use fractional general counsel or retain outside legal firms to provide that ongoing support.
The key is to find the business lawyer that you work well with so that you can understand what you need and they can work with you to achieve it.
