Introduction

Welcome to the Simplifying Legal podcast, brought to you by Businessese. I’m your host, Danielle Liss.

Many years ago, someone told me I was the least lawyer-y lawyer she’d ever met because I helped make legal easier to understand. To this day, it’s one of the best compliments I’ve received in my professional life.

If you’ve ever felt legal was too scary, too overwhelming, too complicated, or just plain incomprehensible, you’re not alone. The Simplifying Legal podcast was created to help. 

In each episode, we’ll do a deep dive into a legal topic and give you concrete next steps so you can apply it to your business. 

My goal is for you to walk away from each episode thinking, oh, that was easier than I thought it would be.

Let’s get started. 

Episode Content

Hey there, this is Danielle. Welcome to episode 7. Today, we’re covering a broad topic that is one of my favorites: why you need a legal strategy. First, something you should know about me: I’m a planner. Always have been and probably always will be. I love planning in all areas, whether it is short- or long-term. Planning for my businesses is something I make a priority since it is such a critical way to analyze what’s happened in the past and how to make sure I’m properly preparing to reach my upcoming goals. 

In my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work with business owners at all stages of their business. For many, when they do business planning, it often involves their team, financial goals, marketing, sales, social media and so many other areas. But they aren’t considering legal when they are strategizing. But, a legal strategy is important for any business. It can help you budget, reduce the overwhelm that many people feel when they think of legal, and, most importantly, give you peace of mind. 

Disclaimer: As always, before we get into today’s topic, a quick disclaimer. This podcast is meant to provide you with legal information only. It’s not legal advice and does not create any type of attorney-client relationship between us. Please don’t take any action without consulting your lawyer first. 

Now, let’s dive in. 

Legal Strategy for Businesses

First and foremost, when it comes to having a legal strategy, it does not matter what size your business is. Your legal needs certainly change depending on what stage your business is in. If you haven’t listened to Episode Six on the Legal Considerations for the Stages of Small Business, I highly recommend it since it has a lot of more specific details about managing legal for each stage. 

It’s important to remember, as soon as you start a business, don’t ignore legal. A lot of business owners want to put it off to concentrate on the more exciting aspects of their business, like their marketing or website. Just keep in mind that legal goes hand in hand with both of those areas and with just about everything you do in your business.

Legal Strategy Needs

Now, let’s focus on why you need a legal strategy, then I’ll talk about how you can start to build your legal strategy. 

If you don’t have a legal strategy for your business, that might mean that you are ignoring legal. I want to emphasize this point: Avoidance is not a legal strategy. 

A while back, I wrote a blog post on the Liss Legal Blog called Avoidance is Not a Legal Strategy and I fully understand why people avoid legal. Budget is usually the main concern, but legal is not always going to break the bank. If you are actively planning for your legal needs, you can set your budget and explore your options. Depending on what you need, you may be able to use legal templates for things like certain contracts and website policies. If you aren’t sure about templates, listen to episode two, which has my recommendations on when to use a legal template versus a lawyer. 

Another reason people tend to ignore legal is that it feels overwhelming. We joke about legalese, but it really can feel like a foreign language. When it seems completely incomprehensible, it’s easy to understand why you might find it easier to ignore. 

I’ve also heard feedback from many business owners, particularly women with virtual businesses, who have struggled to find lawyers that understand their business. They felt like their lawyer didn’t take their businesses seriously. Here’s something I say a lot and some people laugh, but it’s true: You don’t have to hate your lawyer. 

If you feel like your lawyer doesn’t understand your business or you just don’t want to work with them due to a personality conflict, it’s okay to look for other representation. You should feel like your lawyer is there as a partner to help you, not to fight you. Sure, we don’t always give you the news you want to hear and that can be hard, but at the end of the day, you should still be able to find someone you want to work with. 

Creating a legal strategy allows you to be proactive rather than reactive. And, in the legal world, being reactive can also translate to more money. Especially if it is something with litigation or dispute resolution. 

Building Your Legal Strategy

Now that we’ve covered why you need a legal strategy, let’s talk about how to start building the strategy. 

As with most things I discuss on this podcast, you can start by working with a lawyer. I regularly do strategy sessions to help people with a particular area of their business. I also do audits that allow people to get a clearer picture of where they are in their business and what needs to be done as they move forward. (As an aside, that is a great way to help you map out your budget for legal.) 

But, if you don’t want to work with a lawyer right away, it’s still important to know how to create a legal strategy. And, as you’ll see, it’s going to look a lot like regular business planning. 

1. First, map out the different areas within your business as they are now. If you are a service-based business owner, the different arms of your business may look something like this: 
   1. You set up an LLC when you started your business. 
   2. You are a virtual business, so your website and social media presence are key assets for lead generation. 
   3. You work directly with clients, providing them a service. Your service is based on a framework you developed. 
   4. You work with a handful of contractors, including a social media manager and website maintenance company.  
2. Next, consider whether you have any major changes coming in the next 6 months to a year. A couple of examples. 
   1. Business has been growing, so you plan to hire someone to assist with project management and a subcontractor to assist in serving your clients. 
   2. You are launching a new service and want to give it distinct branding. 
3. Now that you’ve mapped out your immediate goals, have you set any far-off goals for your business? Some examples:
   1. Move from a solo provider to an agency model. 
   2. Add eCommerce to your service-based business. 
4. As I said, this looks a lot like a regular business plan so far. The next step is to create a simple and usually very broad legal plan. For example, for the service-based business owner above, the goal may be to ensure that the existing business has adequate protection and is prepared for future growth. You want to ensure that you are legally covered and minimize risk to your business. 
5. Now, that you know what your overall legal goals are, let’s see how legal comes into each of the main areas of the business that you outlined. Let’s look at the example in the first step and each of the areas that the business is currently in. 
   1. You set up an LLC when you started your business. 
      1. If you’ve set up your LLC, that’s a great first step and you may not need to take further action on this. 
   2. You are a virtual business, so your website and social media presence are key assets for lead generation. 
      1. To protect your business, make sure you have the appropriate website policies. If this is an area that interests you, I recommend you listen to episode 4, which is about how to protect your website. 
   3. You work directly with clients, providing them a service. Your service is based on a framework you developed. 
      1. First, let’s talk about the work with clients. Do you have a strong client agreement? Are there any repeated client concerns that you could potentially address by updating your contract? 
      2. Next, look at the framework. How does this framework get delivered to your clients? Are you protecting your intellectual property by limiting their rights to use that framework? If you’ve developed a framework, this is a good time to start the discussion on how to protect your intellectual property. 
   4. You work with a handful of contractors, including a social media manager and website maintenance company.  
      1. You should have an agreement with each of these contractors. Does the agreement offer you the protection to minimize your risk? Is your intellectual property protected? Do you know how to terminate the agreement, if that is needed? If you don’t, this is a great time to review those agreements to make sure nothing needs to be updated.
6. Next, look at the future goals you listed and see if there is any legal impact to those. Are you prepared for those changes or should you reach out to an attorney? What budget and timelines should you consider for the legal pieces? From the earlier example: 
   1. Business has been growing, so you plan to hire someone to assist with project management and a subcontractor to assist in serving your clients. 
      1. You will want to ensure that both of these roles have a strong contract that helps you protect your business and minimize risk. 
   2. You are launching a new service and want to give it distinct branding. 
      1. Whenever you are launching a new service, you may need to make updates to your existing agreements. 
      2. If you plan to use distinct branding, make sure you keep intellectual property in mind. For example, if you are giving the service a specific name that you plan to use with your clients, it’s important to look at whether or not that name is used by any other brands. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you are infringing on someone else’s mark. Additionally, when you set that branding, you may want to consider filing for a trademark. 
7. And finally, consider those far-off goals. They may not need immediate action, but it is something to keep in mind as you consider the goals, especially so you can budget and determine timelines. From the example, the two long-term goals were 
   1. Move from a solo provider to an agency model. 
      1. This might mean adding additional subcontractors or hiring employees. This will be an important transition in your business and this is a good time to work directly with a lawyer. 
   2. Add eCommerce to your service-based business. 
      1. If you are adding eCommerce, you will want to ensure that your intellectual property is protected. As this step gets closer, this is also a good time to work with your lawyer to ensure you have everything covered. 
      2. Additionally, when adding eCommerce to your website, you would need to have the appropriate policies in place. If you want to know more about this, check out episode 5, where I discussed eCommerce policies. 

Adding a legal strategy to your business isn’t that hard once you know what your business goals are. When you create your goals, it’s key to consider what type of legal might be impacted by your plans. Then, you can add those steps to your goals as you move toward implementation. 

Action Steps

Today’s action steps: 

1. What is your current legal strategy? If avoidance is your current legal strategy, evaluate your current business and your business plans and start to outline how legal is involved. Create a broad statement that covers what you need in the legal side of your business. 
2. Analyze each of the main areas of your business and treat it like a business plan. From there, consider how legal impacts each area. A few areas that come up regularly are:  
   1. Team
   2. Clients
   3. Other contractual relationships
   4. Website 
   5. Intellectual property
3. If you have no idea where to start, schedule a strategy session or legal audit with an attorney. Quick promotional bit: this is a service that I offer through Liss Legal and I’d be thrilled to work with you on this. Visit lisslegal.com to learn more. 

I’d love to connect with you outside of the show. Visit Businessese at businessese.com. To find show notes for today’s episode, visit businessese.com/podcast.

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If you have any questions, you can reach out via email at: [email protected].