Rich - Law for Small Business For Dummies--UK

Law for Small Business For Dummies

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester,www.wiley.com

This edition first published 2016

2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Chichester, West Sussex

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ISBN: 978-1-118-97046-1; ISBN 978-1-118-97045-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118- 97044-7 (ebk)

1. Table of Contents

Small companies are often described as the engine room of the countrys economy. The UK has over five million of them. They represent over 99 per cent of all companies in the UK, employ two-thirds of its workforce and deliver almost half its revenues. Yet they often find affordable, understandable legal advice hard to find. Thats one of the reasons for all the anti-lawyer jokes:

• What do you get when you cross a lawyer with the Godfather?
• An offer you cant understand.
• How do you get a group of lawyers to smile for the camera?
• Get them to say Fees.

But Im being unfair. Many people feel that theres no such thing as an anti-lawyer joke theyre all true.

Joking aside, this perception of lawyers as being expensive, difficult to understand and generally unhelpful is a serious problem for small companies, which encounter legal issues every step of the way: when theyre setting up; employing staff or consultants; dealing with their intellectual property; contracting with customers, suppliers or distributors; dealing with disputes; or selling up. Yet research carried out by the Legal Services Board shows that almost half of the small companies in the UK dont use a lawyer to deal with these issues. They prefer to go it alone and take risks with their revenues, margins, profits and exit values by not taking care of their legal business properly.

Of course, many good, decent, helpful lawyers are available, but the traditional law firm structure probably doesnt cater very well for small companies and their needs. Law firms like to have regular clients that they can regularly bill for large amounts, to support their own partnership and overhead costs but small companies dont need legal advice the whole time and are usually strapped for cash. Law firms like to take their time to consider thoroughly all the issues but small companies are always in a hurry. Law firms like to give extensive advice and usually hedge their bets (on the one hand you can do this, on the other hand you must consider that) whereas small companies just want the essentials of the problem described to them and want to be told the answer.

As a result, a mismatch exists between what small companies need in the way of legal advice and whats available to them.

This book gives small companies an easy-to-use guide to the law: its highly practical and covers most of the typical situations in which small companies need legal help.

The book loosely follows the likely trajectory of a small company from set-up and start-up, to launching the business, growing the business and exiting. It maps the legal challenges that come up along the way, providing tips and analysis to help small companies solve them.

I have a caveat, of course (well, it is a legal book after all). Reading this book is helpful, but it cant be the same as taking legal advice. As a general handbook, it doesnt cover all circumstances, and other special features may apply to you and your case. If in doubt about your situation, talk to a lawyer good ones are out there, I promise.

Small companies embrace a wealth of talented, committed, passionate individuals and contain some of the countrys brightest minds. These people are often too innovative or driven to be contained by the boundaries of a more conventional larger corporation. They dont have a lot of time for (and arent interested in) long-winded legal explanations that have nothing to do with their practical problems.

I assume that youre bright, in a hurry and looking for practical legal help written in plain English. I also suspect that you may have had a previous disappointing experience with lawyers because they were too expensive, too slow or spoke a language only they understand. Why do I suspect this? Because the Legal Ombudsman received over 76,000 complaints about law firms in the last three years! I know that I may need to overcome your scepticism about the value of legal advice.

Youve taken a great first step by buying this book. Now my responsibility is to show you that its useful and make sure that you enjoy using it so that it doesnt end up unused on the shelf.

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