Do You Provide Contract Review and General Business Attorney Relationship Services?
This is an exchange that we recently had with a client who owns a small medical business in Mission Viejo, Orange County California. She was interested in knowing more about the services we provided from our Orange county offices.
As this type of question is regularly asked, and since most people don’t really have an idea what we do as business attorneys, we thought this information might be useful to other small business owners. This conversation explains how we help set up corporate entities, evaluate and maintain record books, and prevent future legal problems for many different types of companies. We also discuss the financial advantages of using our service.
“Hi Andy,
Thanks for reaching out. I run a small medical office with my husband and a few associates.
Thankfully, we haven’t needed a lot of legal support in the past (as I knock on wood). We routinely get medical risk management advice from our malpractice carrier.
We have had some needs for contract work for our affiliated doctors on an occasional basis. The guy that was doing it has retired now, though. While we do not have a specific immediate need, we are considering a few minor points we might want to change on our standard contract over the next year or so.
And I think it would be helpful to have a general business attorney relationship in place if some other need arises.
Can you let me know how you engage with work of this nature, and whether it makes sense to speak? Again, not urgent, so something we can do at your convenience.”
Gale X – Small Business Owner Mission Viejo, Orange County California
Answer: Yes, we Provide Services from Initial Business set-up through Corporate Maintenance and Ongoing Counseling
“Hi Gale,
Thanks for reaching out to me. Our specialty is dealing with small businesses.
One of our major areas of focus is the formation of business entities. So, we form corporations and limited liability companies. The client who retains our service is one that is typically looking for a turnkey operation, one that offers a 100% complete and finished product to them.
As part of this ongoing relationship, we deal with a lot of the day-to-day routine legal questions that come up within small businesses
It is common that many clients who have not used this for the initial formation of their company come to us understanding that we provide this full-service approach to forming a corporation or limited liability company.
They ask us to review their corporate record book to see whether or not they did it correctly. Many have resorted to doing it themselves online or seeking the assistance of a non-legal professional to get them started.
Getting a corporation started correctly is an essential part of the corporate veil protections offered by state law. Those people who do it themselves or have someone do it who doesn’t understand all of the legal intricacies, frequently do not find out that there is a problem with their corporate structure until it’s too late.
To service this need, we have created a program specifically for small businesses to help them with this problem of keeping up with the legal maintenance of the business entity.
Probably one of the biggest and most common mistakes small business owners make is failing to complete all of the required annual paperwork after they’ve formed their legal entity. This step ensures that their corporate veil is in place by maintaining the appropriate corporate formalities.
We created this program for small businesses with a low annual flat fee structure. Within this program, we maintain all of their corporate legal records for their business entity.
As part of this ongoing relationship, we deal with a lot of the day-to-day routine legal questions that come up within a small business.
Our clients frequently ask us to draft and\or review contracts, which we are happy to do. Depending on the nature of the project, it’s possible that we will do the project on a flat fee basis, or on an hourly basis depending upon what is needed.
When it comes to engagement, our clients will typically call us up and explain the nature of their problem. Sometimes we do this on the telephone, sometimes via email, and other times face to face. Once we have a sound understanding of the nature of the problem, we will set a budget for the project, and proceed from there.
Due to demand, we are considering offering a monthly retainer fee model to some small business clients. This model has the advantage that owners can easily budget for legal services without worrying about paying large fees for help when unexpected issues arise.”
