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Legal fees of any kind are less than ideal for anyone, person, business, or otherwise. No matter if you're the plaintiff or the defendant, you can be sure that you will be paying thousands, if not tens or hundreds of thousands, of dollars for your legal counsel. For this reason, staying out of legal trouble is imperative for the continued success of any person or business. Legal issues involving businesses tend to be more expensive as well since most businesses are worth more than individual people. Here are a few things to always remain cautious about when running a small business to avoid legal issues and consequences from those issues.
Managing Money
You must keep track of all of your business's money and, by extension, how you spend that money. Any money put in the wrong place can be cause for suspicion among the public, other businesses, or even the government. Business owners, such as Michael Ching, who is now wanted by the Chinese government, have not been open or honest enough about the expenditures of their businesses in the past, and that has led to the near shutdown of their respective businesses. Be aware of the laws that dictate how you can spend your business's money, not only in the country where your business operates but also in any other country you or your business has ties to.
Public Relations Problems
As a business, your relationship to the community of people you serve is important, so when your company is being taken to court, you need to get your statement about the situation out as quickly as possible. Many sources agree that being honestabout what has happened and expressing your desire to fix or respond to the issue as quickly as possible is a necessity. Honesty and speed are the two most important things to keep in mind when crafting your public relations statement. You need honesty because it creates trust between you and the general public, and you need speed to stop news outlets from picking up a story and pointing out all the negative points against you.
Assessing Your Agreements
In order to stay out of legal trouble and avoid paying absurd amounts in legal fees, it may be in your best interest to hire a lawyer anyway, as counterintuitive as it might seem. You absolutely must get all the agreements you make in writing. You cannot rely on a spoken conversation to act as an official agreement. Hire a lawyer to write out a contract that states exactly what your agreement is in clear, legal language. Then negotiate the terms of the contract with the party you're making the deal with until you both agree. For large businesses, this is something they routinely do, however, some small businesses don't, and that can lead to legal and financial trouble that they cannot handle.
Labor Laws
As a way to avoid legal trouble from inside the company itself, pay close attention to all laws protecting your employees. Employees deserve fair treatment, reasonable pay and hours, and a safe and comfortable workplace, and what each of those requirements means can differ by state, assuming your business is run out of the United States. So, always make sure that the way you treat employees falls well within the laws of your state. Current employees are not the only people you need to treat well, however. Past employees and people who applied but were rejected must also be treated fairly and not be discriminated against in any way.Running a business, large or small, is not easy. Most of the time, people running small businesses do not have bad intentions when they are struck with a lawsuit or some other legal trouble, but that does not mean the business is not at fault. It might seem unfair to small business owners, but the laws these businesses tend to get caught on are put in place to create a fair and safe economy. As long as you keep yourself informed and ask for help when you need it, your business has the potential to stay alive and continue thriving.