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Your New Year Checklist: How to Ensure the Legal Affairs of Your Business are in Order

shavonsmith • May 17, 2015

The start of a new year presents an incredible opportunity for us to get things right – or at least attempt to. There is no better time than the start of 2015 to ensure that the legal affairs for your small business are in order.  Why? First, to ensure your business is protected.  As you are busy running the day-to-day operations of your small enterprise, many things fall by the wayside and you may have glaring areas of liability that you’ve just failed to stop and think about.  Second, once the year gets started (and budgets start to dwindle) you may not have the time or resources necessary for a comprehensive review of your businesses legal affairs.  Finally, I’m certain one of the goals for your business is to grow and be bigger, badder, and better than you were last year – you don’t want preventable legal issues standing in the way of your awesome goals.  Like the old saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!  So what exactly should you be looking into? Every business needs a unique plan but here are the top 5 areas that you should ensure are in order for your business for the New Year.

1.    Succession Plan

No one likes to think about breaking up a partnership, becoming incapacitated or especially death, but to some extent you need to begin with the end in mind.  Your plan should include a successor who you think has the strengths and abilities to keep your business running.  If you have partner, think about whether they will run the business on his or her own or if you can appoint someone who works as well as you do with he or she.  If you are anything other than a sole proprietor, your plan should also include a buy-sell agreement that will govern every aspect of how to handle the sale of the departing members stake in the business. Every member or partner in the business should have life insurance that would be used to fund the buy-sell agreement.  Finally, make a list of key documents, accounts and passwords, and make sure they are safe and quickly accessible to the successor.

2.    Insurance Policies

In addition to evaluating life insurance as mentioned above, this is a great time to make sure you currently have the right coverage for your business.  Maybe you’ve grown and you need more coverage than you previously had.  Or perhaps another carrier can provide better terms of your business – explore what’s in the marketplace.

3.    Employment Issues 

Make sure that your employee handbook is up to date with latest law and reflects the current composition of employees.  Oh wait – you don’t have an employee handbook – draft one! Make sure you have policies that cover discrimination and harassment as well as a system for employees to make formal complaints.  While you’re at it, schedule discrimination and harassment training for your employees.  Also, ensure that your standard employment application is compliant with applicable laws.  For instance, several states have recently enacted “ban the box” legislation that prevents employers from asking about criminal records on job applications.

4.    Compliance

Speaking of compliance, are there any updates to laws relevant to your industry?  For instance, District of Columbia just laid out a new set of regulations for food trucks.  http://dcra.dc.gov/service/mobile-food-truck-licensing-information

5.    Your Website

So you’ve updated your site for the New Year but what about your sites terms and conditions, disclaimers and privacy policies?  Exactly what you’ll need will be dictated by what you’re doing online.  For instance, if you’re selling a product via the internet, make sure the terms and conditions cover how payment is collected and how refunds are handled.  If you give advice over your website, your disclaimer should put limitations on the promises, advice, and guarantees made on your site.  Don’t forget to inform users that the site is your intellectual property.

This is just a short list of areas where you should perform a “checkup” for your business.  At SJS Law Firm I provide legal “checkups” to small business owners to ensure that your business is legally protected in each of the areas described above and more.

Contact me today at sjsmith@thesjslawfirm.com or 202-505-5309 to schedule a complimentary consultation.

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