There are all kinds of legal threats that businesses can face including lawsuits, criminal convictions and legal exploitation. It’s important that you protect your business from these threats. Below are some of the different legal measures that you can take to protect your business.
Have a lawyer on call
The best thing you can do to legally protect yourself is to lawyer up. A lawyer can not only help to defend you in a legal case, but they can also offer legal advice. As business law can sometimes be quite complex, it’s useful to have a professional that you can talk to in order to clear things up.
Lawyers can help to offer advice when first starting your business. There may be certain licences that you need to apply for and requirements that you need to meet – a lawyer will be able to inform you on all the licences and requirements that are relevant to your business. If you hire employees, a lawyer may similarly be able to help guide you through employer law, telling which requirements you need to meet.
If you are dealing with a difficult client, supplier or employee, it could also be useful to have a lawyer that you can talk to. They may be able to help you diffuse a situation before it gets to the stage of a lawsuit being filed – or worse a criminal conviction being made.
Lawyers can also help when putting into practice many of the legal measures discussed below. It’s worth finding a lawyer who is reputable, affordable and who has expertise within your area of business.
Register as a limited company
The legal structure of your business is important to consider when it comes to liability. There are two main legal structures: a sole trader and limited company. If you are a sole trader, you are personally liable to pay for any debts, lawsuits and fines related to your business. If you set your company up as a limited company, it means that you are not personally liable for these expenses. In other words, your personal funds and personal assets cannot be used to pay off a lawsuit aimed at your company.
You can check out this site to learn everything you need to know about forming a limited company. Nowadays, the process of becoming a limited company is cheap and easy. You could also find that there are benefits beyond legal protection, such as making your company look more credible.
Trademark your brand
Worried about someone stealing your company name or using your logo? Trademarking your name or logo can give you added legal protection if someone else tries to use your branding.
You can find guides online to registering a trademark. Before registering a trademark, you’ll need to make sure that there are no other companies using your brand name/logo who may already have a trademark in place. It’s worth using a trademark lawyer to help you.
Patent your inventions
A patent is a bit like a trademark, but for inventions. If someone else tries to create and sell a product that uses the same patented ideas as you, you can sue them for patent infringement. In many cases, it can stop a larger company stealing your idea and taking all the credit (and all your customers).
There are attorneys that can help you when applying for a patent. As with a trademark, you’ll need to do your research to make sure that there are no patents already out there that cover your ideas. You can still create an invention using someone else’s patent, but you will have to get their permission (and they may expect a share of profits).
Get legal contracts/terms and conditions professionally written
Contracts and terms and conditions often use a lot of legal mumbo jumbo. While this can make them more difficult to read, it has a valid purpose, which is to make the writing more legally tight. While it can be tempting to write your own contracts and terms and conditions to save money, incorrect wording could potentially lead to legal loopholes. This could leave you open to being legally exploited. Consequently, it’s worth hiring a legal writer to make sure that your contracts and terms and conditions are free of loopholes.
There are legal writers who specialize in this area who you can hire. A regular lawyer may also be able to help you write contracts and terms and conditions, either by writing them themselves or finding a legal writer for you.
Read contracts carefully before working with suppliers
Just as you should take care with your own legal contracts, you should also take care when signing other people’s contracts. When it comes to hiring expensive business services or buying expensive business products, you need to be certain that you know what you’re signing yourself up to – you don’t want to be caught out by a hidden clause.
This doesn’t mean that you have to read 100 pages of terms and conditions. However, you may want to scan certain sections related to things like product return policies, termination/renewal policies and any policies regarding dates and deadlines.
Conduct a health and safety audit
Personal injury lawsuits can be expensive and bad for your reputation. The best way to avoid them is to put in place strong health and safety measures. If you sell a product, this means making sure that your product is as safe as possible. If you have your own business premises such as an office or shop, make sure that this workspace is similarly safe.
Product health and safety testing typically involves making sure that a product meets legal standards. However, you may be able to go one step further to make your product safer by avoiding certain materials/ingredients or incorporating innovative safety features. If dangers cannot be eliminated, then they should be clearly outlined on packaging or in an instruction manual. A product health and safety testing service can carry out tests for you.
When it comes to doing a health and safety audit of your premises, there are a few things to check for. First, think about fire safety – what fire hazards are there in your premises that you can eliminate and what will you/your team do in the event of a fire? Next, consider the duties that your employees carry out and whether you should buy protective equipment or step up training. This could include training employees how to use cleaning chemicals and providing gloves. Hiring a health and safety inspector to carry out an audit can help you to spot any other dangers, so that you can fix them.
Put important agreements into writing
As already discussed, contracts are a great way to legally protect yourself. However, sometimes it’s not possible to whip up a contract for every single small agreement. For example when agreeing to conduct a meeting at a certain time, you don’t need to create a contract.
You can however legally protect yourself by putting the agreement in writing in either an email or text. If a client turns up to a meeting at another time and then tries to claim you both agreed on a different time, you can then use the email or text as legal evidence. This is particularly useful when dealing with difficult clients. You should also consider doing it when dealing with employees and suppliers.
Record phone calls
A client or supplier may claim that something was agreed on the phone which you have no evidence of. Recording phone calls can be a great way of legally protecting yourself if this happens.
Many modern Business Phone Systems allow you to record calls. Make sure that you always notify the caller that the phone call is being recorded before recording the call.
Set up cameras around your premises/vehicles
On top of audio evidence, you can also collect video evidence of certain situations to protect yourself. This could include adding cameras to your premises to catch evidence of personal injury fraud or employee misconduct, or placing cameras on vehicles to monitor employee driving and determine liability in an accident.
As with recording phone calls, you should put up signs to tell people that there are cameras in place. There are certain laws as to where you can put cameras, so bear this in mind.
Be careful what you promise clients!
Broken promises commonly lead to unhappy customers – and often lawsuits. You and your employees should be careful of what you claim you are able to achieve. This is particularly important if you’re putting something in writing – just as you can use this as evidence against a client, a client may be able to use it as evidence against you.
Start by considering your marketing and product information. Do not make any claims about your product or service that are untrue. This includes claiming that your product is unique or the best at something when other products are similar or proven to be more capable.
Once customers start working with you, be truthful about progress and how long your product/service will take to be completed. Missed deadlines are a common cause of lawsuits – if you’re unlikely to complete work by a deadline due to unforeseen setbacks, let customers know ahead rather than reaching the deadline and then telling customers.
