Jobs and Careers with James Caan 2012 - (Page 186)

legal 046 The law and Legal advice isn’t just a nice-to-have, but a must: protecting yourself, your business, your employees and your customers, and making sure you’re obeying all the relevant laws, should be at the top of your agenda right from the start. prepared in all areas. As a result, you need to be totally open with them (don’t forget, your relationship is protected by their obligation to confidentiality); you may find that the questions they ask throw up a few challenges you hadn’t previously considered, and this is in fact one of the benefits of an advisory engagement so make sure you expose the full extent of your business plan to their scrutiny. One of the first things the solicitor will look to determine is your business’s structure: will you be operating as a sole trader or do you need to set up a company? Will you be going into partnership with others and if so how is ownership to be apportioned? If you are going to set up a company, will it be a partnership, a limited company or a limited liability partnership, for example? You may have gone into business with a particular structure in mind, but your solicitor may well give you some very good reasons why a totally different structure might be more appropriate. Again, he or she will be able to draw up the paperwork for the solution upon which you eventually decide. If your business is going to involve designs, content or brands which you need to protect legally - and most do – you will need to get legal advice on how best to protect this intellectual property (IP); then, of course, you’ll need actually to protect it, which will involve a degree of bureaucratic endeavour including checking that you yourself won’t be in contravention of anyone else’s IP. Of particular importance is your trading name: when setting up your business For most people, the legal industry is something to be accessed on an asrequired basis – and those requirements tend to be infrequent. For business owners, the aim too should be to make recourse to legal expertise as infrequent as possible: not only can it be an expensive endeavour right from the off, but regular requirements for legal representation normally indicate that something, somewhere, is wrong with the business. However, skimping on legal advice at the beginning of the entrepreneurial journey can prove hideously costly in the long run: paying for the right assistance right from the word go, whilst it may seem like an outlay which could be better spent elsewhere, could mean you avoid existential difficulties when you’re up and running. Moreover, a solicitor’s advice might not be limited to purely legalistic matters: many have long years of experience dealing with start-ups and might have numerous examples of successes and failures for you to learn from. Don’t forget, too, that the solicitor’s role isn’t just an advisory one: there may well be a significant chunk of official paperwork required to get your business established and some (especially if the business has multiple shareholders) can require professional expertise well beyond most laypeople. Your lawyers will be there to take much of this burden off your shoulders. When you engage a solicitor, he or she will go through a detailed checklist looking at all aspects of your business and ensuring that you are properly legally Your business with James Caan

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Jobs and Careers with James Caan 2012

Career bites
What really counts
Weighing it all up
Around the world
Ask the experts
Growth sectors
Train your brain
Homework
Carve a career in care
Here come the girls
Mum’s the word
An apple a day
It’s for you-hoo!
A step forward
His & hers
Bank on it
Risky Business
In the money
3 Specialist medical jobs
The stuff of life
Power on
Engineering heroes
Outside the box
Keeping it clean
Your Business with James Caan
Go Go GadGets
On trend office
Take my advice
Getting Going
The bank job
Make the most of your assets
Back to business
The law and you
HR Matters
Make it work
Into the cloud
Design & shine
Reach out
Gorkana and Gurkhas
Protect and prosper
Making it count
Your business or your life?
Nice supplies
Beginning business
Ship it
Ethical business
Backing business
Standing together
Top 10 hiring tips

Jobs and Careers with James Caan 2012