Top 3 Legal Tips for a Small Business from a Former Legal Assistant
From my experience working in a law firm and running a successful small business, here’s what you need to know.
After I graduated college, my first job was a legal assistant/receptionist at a Dallas law firm, specializing in small business. As the firm grew in size, so did my role and responsibilities. Eventually becoming senior legal assistant, I oversaw all paralegal and legal assistant work, deadlines, and drafts. I felt like I was an attorney (without the ethical responsibility riding in my shoulders) with the workload, drafting, courthouse filing, and stress. Ahh! Eventually I moved on, but not before learning a heck of a lot about the legality of small businesses. So I wanted to share the top 3 things I learned and observed all my years in the legal world and with my own small business.
1. Incorporate.
Make yourself legit! File your company with the state to make your company a legal entity, such as an LLC. When I worked at the law firm, this is the first thing I would get assigned to do for our small business clients. Each time I would fill-out a Certificate of Formation (Form 205), complete a $300 check for the filing fee, and mail it to the Texas Secretary of State to be filed. The state will file it and return it to you with a pretty file marked stamp. Violia, you’re official!So why incorporate? Simple answer: protection. Forming this entity protects you personally. For example... Let’s say that you’re a wedding photographer and you’re shooting engagement photos and you tell the bride and groom to stand on a cute dock overlooking a lake. While they’re posing, that dock has a loose plank and breaks (heaven forbid), and the bride breaks her leg. She then tries to sue you since you told her to stand on that dock. Scary, right? If you’re incorporated, no need to over-worry since you essentially have a protective barrier around you. The bride can sue but since you’re incorporated, she can't get her hands on your personal assets; your house, your bank accounts, your cars, etc. are all safe. Chances are this type of thing will never happen, but it’s nice to know you’re protected. And let’s be honest... some people are just crazy.A few things to note about incorporating to an LLC:
It’s $300 to file the Certificate of Formation. That’s it! (It may be different in different states, but in Texas, it’s just this flat rate to file.)
You need to keep your personal finances completely separate from your business finances. No sharing business bank accounts and credit cards with your personal accounts.
You're required to file Franchise Tax Report annually every May. This is actually simple to do and you can file it online when it's due.
Our law firm incorporated companies into LLCs 90% of the time and my own company is an LLC, so this what I’m most knowledgeable on. If you’re operating as a corporation (S-Corp or C-Corp), there’s a whole lot more that goes into a corporation than an LLC. I'm not as knowledgeable on the subject of corporations, but stay tuned for an interview with a professional coming soon!
2. Record Keeping.
Get a bookkeeping system. It will seriously change the way you view your company financially. My bookkeeping system started in Excel, but I quickly realized I needed more. I personally use Quickbooks Online, and I also hear FreshBooks is also a good system. It’s about $20/mo and keeps track of everything for you (expenses, invoicing, balance sheets, income statements, etc.) so you can worry about more important things with your business. It also makes tax time so much easier. I repeat: IT MAKES TAXES SO MUCH EASIER. You can see your P&L (profit and loss statement) with a click of a button. This is used by you or your accountant at tax time, and also should be viewed by you often to get a good feel where your company stands financially. Here’s a copy of our P&L for last year (redacted in all the right places of course), but I want to show you the basic layout of a typical income statement.All my business bank accounts are linked to QBO so every transaction is automatically recorded. Every other Friday, I log into my QBO account and categorize each expense: COGS (cost of goods sold), shipping expense, automotive expense, contractor expense, and so on. Then at the end of each month, I reconcile these accounts.I’m no where near a professional accountant or CPA, but I was actually an accounting tutor in college so I'm comfortable with balance sheets, profit and loss, reconciling, etc. BUT I also use an outside bookkeeping service, Steadfast Bookkeeping. They pretty much take over my reconciling, confirm I’m categorizing my expenses correctly, and they're always there if I have any questions. They have options and pricing for all levels, depending how much you'd like them to handle. I started doing everything myself, but quickly realized my time was better spent on other things in the business, so I'm glad I have help with my record keeping.
3. Contracts.
Have a signed contract with every client, even small jobs. Everything should be in writing. Like an LLC, this protects you and your business. Having a contract also confirms to your clients and potential clients that you are a professional business and should be treated like one!Since I wrote and edited my fair share of legal contacts in my past life, I drafted ours myself, but there are some great resources out there for templates. I hear great things about The Contract Shop by Christina Scalera. She has a template for pretty much every creative profession to download.My contract started as just a single page, and included the simple outlines of the job and payment schedule. Now it’s over four pages and I’m always adding to it. Even the smallest of issues, such as the way we ship items and usual timeframe of our production schedule is included. It's better to include in your contract than not add and regret it later!If you have any questions, I advise you to contact an attorney. Again, I’m not an attorney and don’t have my law degree. There are some small business attorneys more than willing to stand by your side. I hope this helps you with your own small business!
We hope this helps our fellow small business owners!