How a business attorney can help startups

Finally, being able to start your business feels like a dream come true but running your own business is just as daunting and challenging as it is exciting. Even though there is no guarantee of success when it comes to running your business, but the combination of entrepreneurial spirit, hard work, determination, and understanding of the market, will improve your success chance. Another important way to increase your success chances is to invest in experts and professional services that help better plan for the future, identify current and potential issues and come with creative solutions for them.

When you are starting your new business, you need a legal representative and business attorney to guide you through several documentation, policies, and laws that impact your business. Depending on the nature of your operations and industry, you may need a general business attorney or an expert like a criminal attorney, tax lawyer, or other.

Your business lawyer will not only look after the documentation and legalities for you, but they will act as a safety net that you can turn to for good advice. However, many times entrepreneurs learn this lesson very late in their entrepreneurial journey. It's not always obvious to identify traps that can become a big problem for the business later unless you have experience working closely with new businesses. That's why the expertise of a business attorney can make chance a difference for a startup or a small business. Besides, you can either hire a stand-alone, full-time business lawyer for your startup or you can consult a law firm like Lowther & Walker lawyers for their technical services.

Here are some more ways how a business attorney can help startups and new businesses in their formation, establishment, and success.

Getting off to a good start

The initial phase of your business journey is very crucial and it is important that you position yourself on the right path for success, which is why overlooked by a lot of people. It is significant for your future success that you invest time and money in your business's infrastructure, this will become a huge competitive advantage for you in the future and save your time and money in the future. It will allow your business the flexibility it needs to scale and expand during the initial years.

An experienced business attorney or a white collar crime lawyer, based on your business nature, you need a professional who understands the possible challenges that await you in the future and help you build a business structure that stays strong throughout. They can help you avoid many common challenges that businesses similar to yours face. 

Guiding with your business form

This might be one of the most basic decisions you have to take while starting your business but this will have a huge effect on your operations and how the business affects your personal life. That's why it is essential that you understand your options and choose the right corporate structure for your business. Even though there is no best business entity, but you have to find the structure that best fits your needs.

Sole proprietorship, partnership, limited partnership, limited liability partnership, limited liability company, and corporation are business structure options you can choose from. All these business structures have their own advantages and disadvantages and based on your plans, and goals you should decide the right form with the help of your lawyer, as this will have a huge implication on your business throughout its life. This one decision will impact how your business is taxed and how the business owner will be taxed, how will be responsible for business debts and up to what extent, what will be registration requirements, which license will be needed, and how much it will cost to set up the business. That's you must hire the right lawyer or team of lawyers with different expertise like federal criminal defense attorneys, tax consultants, and others to guide you.

Sort your documents

Running your business operations smoothly is not all owning and managing a business is all about. You have to consider and take care of a lot of paperwork and documentation when you are running a business, which is extremely important for the success of your business. That said, a business attorney will be able to help in a number of ways like managing your corporate-government documents that include all paperwork concerning your corporate structure like articles of incorporation, shareholder agreements, partnership agreements, bylaws, and others.

He or she will also be looking after the blood life of your businesses, which means the contracts, agreements, registrations, and licensing. To be able to run your operations you are required to follow a number of laws and regulations and your lawyers take care of all these formalities while you are doing what you do the best producing and selling your goods and services.

Planning and protecting business assets

Depending on where you are in your business journey, however, you might have to acquire significant assets to set up the business infrastructure, from real estate to high-tech equipment to your intellectual property. When you start your business it is important that you also plan for the future and protect your assets. For example, you might want to cover things like what will happen when you retire or decide to close down the business or merge. Your business attorney can help you better understand your options, legal implications, and guide you to make more informed decisions. For example, they can guide you with financial and tax planning, negotiation of leases as well as other real estate transactions, and they can even be a big help during transition, succession, and dissolution.

Incentives for employees

When You have experience working closely with successful businesses you understand how litigation attorneys help organizations. When you have dedicated and satisfied people working towards common goals, you attract success. To ensure this, it is important to have an incentive plan for your employees in a unique way that not only protects the company but also aligns the team to build a long-term relationship with the business. Hiring a business lawyer will help you draft a personalized incentive plan for your employees that includes specific schedules that fit your business operations. Investing in a business attorney early on will help you down the road.

Client agreements

If you are a B2B business, client agreements are a very important aspect of your business operations as you would want to build an ongoing relationship with the client that supports both involved parties. Even a small misunderstanding with a client during a meeting can become a big issue later on and it might be too late for you to realize that it would be in everyone's best interest to have signed a formal legal contract for complete transparency and to avoid misunderstandings. Signing contracts would not only have to maintain a cordial professional relationship with your client that equally favors both parties but it also eliminates the possibilities of legal mishaps and arguments with clients.

Trademarks

The business world is not as simple as we would think and some people are just not very creative or they are looking for shortcuts and love to copy other people's work. So, to avoid any mishap and before it's too late to hire a lawyer to help you file a trademark for your business logo and name because people might imitate it.

Draft mutual non-disclosure agreements 

You might have heard of one-way non-disclosure agreements; however, mutual NDAs might be trickier. That's why it is recommended that you have your attorney review this type of agreement and other documents. You might need to use mutual NDA documents when you start business operations with development partners. Depending on the nature of your business, during the early stage, you might have to work with a business development partner to scale your product and your lawyer can review and ensure compliance with your mutual NDA.

Small claims court

When you are running your business, you will be surprised to see what issues and challenges randomly come up. For example, what do you do when a client simply stops replying and making scheduled payments? In business you have to be prepaid for different challenges, in this case, your lawyer can make proper use of contracts and personal network along with making trips to small claims court to resolve the issue. Your business lawyer can represent your business's interest and even guide you through the entire process.