Most businesses carry with them a certain amount of legal risk, which is why implementing preventive law can yield a great deal of value. The process of implementing preventive law begins with choosing an attorney, and it requires a sound understanding of your business’s legal needs.
What Is Preventive Law?
To begin, let’s discuss the meaning of preventive law.
Much in the way that preventive vehicle maintenance keeps your car running without expensive breakdowns, preventive law can help you avoid major legal problems that may occur in the future. By retaining legal counsel, you’re able to make sure your business stays in line with regulations while following sound legal practices.
Some areas where preventive law can help include:
- Choosing an appropriate entity type for your business—and complying with all requirements to maintain that legal designation.
- Creating contracts that are clearly defined and which serve your best interests—including in the event of a dispute.
- Setting policies for internal operations and external interactions.
- Managing employees and maintaining sound hiring practices.
Ultimately, preventive law is the practice of keeping in line with best practices and pertinent laws.
Steps to Implementing Preventive Law
To successfully implement preventive law in your business, follow the steps outlined below.
1. Choose an Attorney
The process will begin by choosing a lawyer who suits your company’s needs. By getting referrals, doing research, and interviewing potential attorneys, you should be able to find one who has experience in corporate law. They should be familiar with matters most relevant to your business.
2. Discuss Business Objectives
With your attorney, discuss your business objectives. Your industry and entity type should be part of this since it will impact the types of legal tasks you’ll need to perform.
3. Determine What Legal Needs are Relevant to Your Objectives
With your objectives in mind, determine what legal services you might need to reach those. Will you need to negotiate purchase contracts? Limit risks from everyday operations? Manage a reliable workforce? Maybe you’re just starting out and need to choose an entity type. Whatever your needs are, discuss them with your attorney and determine how they can help you reach your goals.
4. Review All Agreements/policies And Put Them In Writing
If you have existing contracts, review them and see if they might be updated. In addition, review your current policies and discuss how they could be updated to limit liability. Once you have a set of policies, practices, and contracts you can rely on, make sure they’re put in writing.
5. Follow Routine Practices And Policies
Having policies and contracts in place is important, but you also need to make sure you comply with them in your daily operations. Those may involve repeated tasks, such as meetings, reporting, and so forth.
After Getting a Plan in Place
When you have a preventive law plan in place, it’s important to review it every so often with your attorney. After all, your business’s needs will change over time, and there may be gaps in your plan that aren’t readily obvious from the start. As such, you’ll want to consult regularly with your attorney to see how your plan could be improved or updated over time.