Legal

An agreement does not need to be in writing to be legally binding as enforceable contracts can either be in written or verbal form.

It would be great if you could work with a lawyer every time a minor documentation issue arose, but for many businesses this is simply untenable. Here are the three key times when you shouldn’t avoid working with a lawyer.

A contract is a legally binding agreement made between two or more parties. As a contract is legally binding, it is critical for you to spend the time to make sure that you get it right.

Businesses enter into loan agreements on a regular basis, but it’s crucial that that you review any loan agreement you sign off on.

Many business people don’t bother working with a lawyer when entering into important contracts, and end up agreeing to terms which eventually cause long terms issues, both from a client relationship and monetary perspective.

An unfortunate reality is that many businesspeople draft important legal documents themselves, using a template from a previous job or simply a free template they’ve discovered on a random website.

Setting up a franchise can be a great business decision, but there are also significant legal and regulatory costs to be considered.

Australian business has long had the millstone of workers’ compensation claims around its neck.

If you run a company, no matter how big or small, your company shareholders agreement will be the most important legal document you’re likely to deal with.

Confidentiality agreements, or non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), are very common and business owners often won’t want to pay a lawyer to complete the review of every document for them.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) has been waging the ‘Small Business Too Big to Ignore’ campaign since April in a bid to ensure the sector isn’t forgotten in the 2013 federal election.

There’s a lot to think about when you’re buying or selling a business. Entrepreneurs often get stuck into the details of the transaction without thinking about the legal issues they may need to deal with and how they intend to approach them.

Each year the Australian Taxation office targets key sectors of Australian business for audit campaigns – in its Compliance in Focus 2013 notice, small businesses are among those to have drawn the short straw.

Restaurants and cafés will no longer have to produce separate menus for weekends and public holidays when they might apply a surcharge.

While it may seem that we’ve come a long way from the Mad Men days where discrimination was part and parcel of office life, the truth is often far from that.

Several reforms to the NSW WorkCover scheme, designed to reduce the administrative burden on the state’s small business owners, will come into effect on 30 June this year.

One of the keys to success in business today is ensuring your online marketing material is engaging, with SMBs using images and artwork that are pleasing to the eye to attract an audience.

When terminating an employee by reason of redundancy, it is critical to ensure the redundancy is genuine, provide a fair consultative process and know your employee’s entitlements.

Australian SMEs are encouraged to use the Personal Property Securities Register (PPSR) database to search for and register security interests and avoid running into financial difficulty.

From diet pills to penis enlargement pumps, fraudulent products are rife in the online market. Con artists are increasingly taking advantage of people’s body image insecurities for financial gain, but who’s to blame?