You may think it’s a cost-effective option to do your own legal work. Bootstrapping a business is tough and you only have so much money to work with; however not allocating a portion of your budget towards legal in the beginning will likely cost you more in the long run. You don’t know what you don’t know, so it’s important to get legal guidance to help ensure you’re on the right track.
Whether you’re using a third party website to create a founder’s agreement or pulling your terms of use from the web, it’s imperative you ensure that the terms necessary to protect your business are included in your contracts. All too often businesses use contracts found online or borrowed from a fellow entrepreneur, not realizing that there are potentially inconsistencies, missing provisions and loopholes that could come back to haunt them later.
All deals are different and relationships are different, so a contract that works for one situation may leave you unprotected in another. The effectiveness of a contract is often determined by the level of detail included and other rights and remedies should the relationship not work out. If certain provisions are missing, you could be taking on more legal exposure and risk than you realize. It only takes one bad contract to sink a business.
Tricia Meyer is Founder + Managing Attorney of Meyer Law, one of the fastest growing law firms in the United States. Meyer helps entrepreneurs and technology companies from startups to large corporations with day-to-day matters and notable clients include companies that have appeared on Shark Tank to companies gracing the Inc. 500 to some of the largest companies in the world.
Tricia has been named on the Forbes Next 1000 list, is one of the Most Influential Female Lawyers in Chicago according to Crain’s Chicago Business and been recognized as a top 10 technology lawyer.
As an entrepreneur and a lawyer, Meyer has a unique perspective and has mentored thousands of startups and scaling companies at tech incubators and accelerators across the United States such as 1871, WeWork Labs and Techstars. Tricia has been featured in Inc., Crain’s, Chicago Tribune, NBC Chicago, American Express OPEN Forum, and more. Learn more at www.MeetMeyerLaw.com and follow Meyer Law’s story on Instagram @loveyourlawyer.
