Corporate Counsel for the Small Business Owner
A business owner needs an attorney to create a business entity to create a succession plan, to protect assets and to minimize income taxes. This business entity must be supported with agreements, minutes, annual reports, and statement of information to protect against lawsuits, creditors, owner disputes, divorce, death and double taxation.
Corporate counsel creates the business entity such as a corporation, or limited liability company and works with the business owner to avoid common problems with employees, vendors, customers and co-owners with written agreements that define expectations and promises.
A key document for any business entity is the agreement among owners on how to operate the entity and how to transfer ownership. This document often appears as several documents known as a buy-sell agreement, shareholders’ agreement and minutes. Good law practice is to provide all operating procedures and ownership transfer methods in one document. Best practices include in the document conflict resolution requirements to avoid deadlock and the destruction of the entity.
