General & Corporate Contracts
Introduction
From the most basic non-disclosure agreement to complex multi-party joint ventures, your business intent will frequently need to be translated into binding legal contracts. Finding a firm, and at least one partner within that firm, that understands your industry, your business, and your aspirations, allows you to focus on your strengths… while ensuring that your agreements are clear, complete, and accurate.
What
Few startups can afford a General Counsel, so day-to-day legal advice and contracting is almost always outsourced. Your legal representatives will at a minimum provide you legal counsel, and will be responsible for reviewing and drafting contracts and other legal documents. The law is complex, and a single attorney can’t do it all, so many firms will have partners with special expertise in labor law, tax, finance, M&A, litigation, regulatory, and the like. Beyond legal counsel, however, many firms also offer networking benefits, connecting clients to sources of funding, partnership, and exit.
When
Unless you’re an attorney, you’ll very likely want to hire an attorney on day 1. Even setting up a business entity can be fraught, and if you’re not sure, an investment now can help you avoid errors that could cost the business much more in the future.
Why
The best contracts and legal documents are those that are signed, filed, and never reviewed again. Indeed, if you’re frequently reading your legal documents, it might be time to spend some effort on the relationship! That said, if your company becomes successful, there will be disagreements between even the best of actors, and a strong legal foundation is often difficult to build when the skyscraper is half-built. From another perspective, entrepreneurs should be pragmatic, but are often natural optimists. Attorneys are trained to identify and mitigate legal risks. This combination is often greater than the sum of the parts.
Learning Goals
How to select, retain, and manage outside legal counsel.