Startup Law 101 Series: What Every Entrepreneur Should Know About Business Law

The Startup Law 101 series aims to educate founders and entrepreneurs on the basics of startup law.

Here are my suggestions on this important question.

1. Law is fundamentally a specialty field and businessmen should leave it, for the most part, to specialists when it comes to technical details.

This part cannot be stressed enough. The law is a maze of complexities. If you, as an entrepreneur, try to master it at that level, you will be an unusual entrepreneur if you don’t quickly get discouraged and abandon the effort altogether.

2. However, entrepreneurs can feel trapped by specialists who lock them up and sometimes abuse them. Lawyers have been known to try to capitalize on the “fear, uncertainty and doubt” (FUD) factor that can be used to scare off businesses where none legitimately exist. Therefore, it can be dangerous to leave everything in the hands of specialists without being informed about their proper role and without being proactive in managing their activities as contract agents.

3. Entrepreneurs should try to obtain a labor Knowledge of the law as it affects their businesses. The emphasis here is on “work”. This is not technical knowledge. It’s not about going to law school or learning to think like a lawyer. It’s about trying to gain the equivalent knowledge of law that a serial entrepreneur might have; it’s about knowing the decision points and the major factors that affect those decisions so you can manage the efforts of a lawyer to provide you with technical assistance at those points It’s about learning the fundamentals of how businesses are formed, financed, managed, and sold . It is about understanding how agreements work within the context of a company. As an entrepreneur, don’t to have know how these things work beyond taking the advice of their lawyers. But you’ll be much sharper if you do. You can be led by the professionals, or you can actively manage your efforts, even using your expertise, to help achieve your goals.

4. Therefore, while the law is fundamentally boring to most businessmen, the smart ones attempt to educate themselves in this area as necessary to achieve the goal of being effectively proactive in working with attorneys and being able to use the law effectively to promote their businesses. goals.

5. What does this investment of time and effort bring you? It will teach you how to use the law to help protect you from liability risks related to your business. You will improve your ability to effectively plan for the launch and growth of your business. Ultimately, it will save you money because it will improve your ability to manage your attorneys’ time.

6. How do you get this knowledge? It depends on you. I emphasize here only that you should not disdain the task just because it involves the law. Nor should you overdo it in the other direction by immersing yourself in specialized forms of knowledge. Strike a balance. Invest the time necessary to understand business law at a high level, with a strategic and non-technical approach. Use this author’s Startup Law 101 series to learn the basics of startup law. Read major blogs in the area (Startup Company Lawyer and The Startup Lawyer are good). Read the posts. Think about the problems. Get a broader perspective on how legal issues affect you and your business.

You can also use self-help resources from publishers who specialize in such jobs. These can be useful for learning about general legal issues affecting businesses, although they are less useful specifically for initial questions.

In the end, experience will be your best teacher. But you will need to acquire a basic knowledge to ensure that you learn the most from your experiences. And above all, be sure to work with a business attorney who will work with you and educate you on the legal steps you are taking. Beware of attorneys who keep you in the dark and just spread the FUD factor.

Remember, don’t be discouraged if you can’t understand the legal technicalities. Your goal is not to master the technicalities. It is to gain practical knowledge. Place a high value on anything that gives you that perspective. This is what the serial entrepreneur masters. It is what he will need to master as well if he wishes to be optimally effective as an entrepreneur in managing legal matters to further his business objectives.