7 Reasons Why It’s Important To Have A Business Lawyer

Running a business can be an exciting, rewarding venture. Seeing it all come together is an incredible feeling. Building a reputation and client-base is extremely enriching, and once the ball gets rolling, you don’t want to stop. Unfortunately, many successful businesses practically disappear overnight due to troubles that could’ve been avoided had they simply hired legal counsel.

Let’s take a look at some of the most important reasons that your business needs a lawyer.

Reviewing Business Contracts

While it may be tempting to draft and sign contracts completely on your own, a lawyer can ensure that the agreement is airtight. After all, just because a contract is signed, it doesn’t mean that the contract is necessarily enforceable. Certain clauses or sections of your contract could go against a state or federal regulations and laws, and no one could ever be compelled to honor it.

Sometimes, there are some unforeseen loopholes in the fine print that can damage a business. The experienced lawyers at Weisblatt Law Firm know that leading a business is stressful and legal issues or a bad contract are the last thing you want! Fortunately, their lawyers review contracts for a living, so they know how to do it thoroughly, efficiently, and effectively to ensure that you don’t need to lose sleep over it.

When making any sort of agreement with another party, you don’t want to leave anything up to chance, and proper legal counsel mitigates many of the legal and financial risks of a legally binding agreement.

Lawsuit Defense

If your business gets sued, you can’t just represent yourself. A lawyer who is familiar with your firm and its operations will have the greatest chance of getting the best legal outcome for your business. Whether or not you run a brick-and-mortar business, you undoubtedly have a long list of liabilities. Sooner or later, something will go wrong.

Without a lawyer, your business can lose a huge percentage of its hard-earned funds, and this can lead to a death spiral that’s difficult to escape. It would be a shame to spend so much time building your business up just to have it ruined by a single lawsuit! A lawyer is more likely to identify points of concern in your business model, and with their help, you can stop many legal debacles from ever happening in the first place.

Structure

Whether you want to incorporate, enter into a partnership, or take on another legal business struggle, a lawyer can help you through the process, and they can advise you on your best option. Turning your business into an LLC may sound great, but what are the drawbacks? Someone well-versed in the law will be able to identify the smaller details that determine whether or not a specific business structure is ideal.

At the end of the day, you want to choose the optimal structure, and you can’t do that alone. Once you’ve decided on a structure, a lawyer can find you the proper forms, walk you through them, and ensure that everything is done properly.

Employees

Having an employee isn’t as easy as giving someone a task, paying them cash, then going about your day. There is a ton of laws governing how to properly deal with employees. Are your employment contracts fair, enforceable, and legal? Is your compensation and benefits structure compliant with local, state, and federal rules? Is the workspace up to standard?

A lawyer can answer these questions, and they can give invaluable counsel on the potential risks and pitfalls of your business’s employment situation. If you employ anyone in any capacity, that opens a Pandora’s Box of potential liabilities. If any employee gets injured, harassed, or legally wronged on the job, then you can expect to see them in court.

If they think they’ve been wronged when they haven’t, your business still needs a solid legal defense. After all, anyone can try to sue anyone else for pretty much any reason. Even if you think you’re doing everything right, it’s best to have an experienced legal professional by your side.

Purchase and Sale

You may come to a point where you want to sell your business, buy a competitor, or make a large purchase of another entity’s assets. It sounds easy at first, but there are many legal questions to consider. Unlike buying a candy bar at the grocery store, you’ll have to jump through some hoops and take the right steps to make sure the transaction goes smoothly. You want to be sure that the contract is enforceable, and you also want to get what you expect out of the sale or purchase.

A proper lawyer will examine all of the details to help you understand what exactly you’re getting out of this purchase. They’ll be aware of any relevant taxes, regulatory hurdles, and paperwork you may have to deal with. and they can set you on the right track to get any permits and licenses involved with the acquisition.

Compliance

Rules and regulations dominate the business landscape at every level. Broadly speaking, you have to comply with federal, state, county, and municipal regulations when running your business. If your business operates internationally, then you’ll have to deal with all the relevant regulations in each nation as well as tariffs and other international trade concerns.

There’s no way that you can thoroughly uncover every single detail involved with local, state, national, and international compliance, so it’s best to leave it to someone who has the education, knowledge, expertise, and time for such a monumental task.

Intellectual Property

Perhaps you’ve developed a new product or service. You don’t just want someone to come along and profit from a new product or service you’ve worked so hard to develop, do you? Of course not, but filing for a patent, copyright, or trademark can be an intimidating prospect.

There is a very specific way to go about it, and for someone who has not gone through law school and practiced for years, it’s hard to figure out where to start. An experienced lawyer has seen it all, and they can make sure that you have done everything you can to adequately protect your intellectual property.

From patents to acquisitions, employees to federal compliance, there is a huge amount of information that needs to be known to ensure that your business is operating within the confines of the law. You’re too busy running your business to take care of it on your own, so for your business’s sake, hire an expert legal team to keep the fruits of your labor safe.