When you start your business, hiring a new legal team isn’t high on the list of priorities for most start-ups, but it should be. Here’s why.
Like it or not, your new business is going to face legal issues before it’s even finished setting up. At multiple points along the way of its growth cycle, you will need to consult a legal team for advice. If you don’t, you risk becoming non-compliant in different areas of business law.
Business lawyers do all sorts of beautiful things for your company. They can advise you on protecting against cybercrime, and they can defend you should anyone choose to sue you. They protect your business’s rights in terms of legality, and they even protect your reputation. Here are a few other ways that hiring a legal advice team will save your business money in the long term.
Why would your business need legal advice?
According to the expert business lawyers at Sutherland Lawyers, your business might need legal advice for a whole plethora of reasons. Some of the most common causes of business that might need legal advice include:
- Procurement – when you buy a new property, your business will need advice on whether it’s all legal.
- Financial services – either giving or receiving financial services comes with many legal issues. Again, a lawyer can help navigate these.
- A business and commercial lawyer best manages shareholder agreements, as are director’s disputes.
- Business contract law is a whole specific branch of law.
- There is employment legislation to consider
- Business start-up comes with their own set of litigation.
- There are also times when you will need a lawyer to represent you and defend you from public accusations.
- Let’s not forget about cybercriminals in the current age. Data scandals cost millions every year. A lawyer can stop it from happening to you.
How does hiring legal advice save your business money?
As you can see from the above areas of law, there are several regions where a lack of legal advice could harm your business. Let’s look at a few examples.
Imagine your business is expanding into unfamiliar territory. This unknown territory is in a different country. You seek to buy a brick-and-mortar establishment in this country to house your new offices. Unfortunately, you forget to check local law, which states that you cannot purchase property in this country as an outside business without paying a specific tax you neglected. Had you consulted a legal team, you would not miss this tax, and you could spare yourself a healthy fine.
Imagine an employee trip and falls on your warehouse floor and tries to sue you. You will need a legal team for representation. And a third example is that your shareholders could be unable to reach an agreement that everyone approves. Again, a legal team can be brought in to negotiate on each client’s behalf and come to some arrangement.
There are ways where a legal team can help represent your business and save you money. For example, avoid lengthy court battles, settle with people who have genuine cases against you out of court, or simply stop your reputation from being dragged through the mud. All of these save your business capital.
