Lisa Fraley | 7 Easy Steps to Legally Protect Your Business

Step 1: Create your website disclaimer.

• You should prioritize creating your website disclaimer as your first legal document.

• It’s a document that tells people about the contents of your website.
  • It basically keeps your website visitors grounded and helps them know your basic rules and protection.

• Do not copy and take another website’s disclaimer.
  • You should create your own that introduces your business entity and answers the questions:
    • Who are you?
    • What do you do?
    • What are you not doing?
    • It should provide clarity of your role.

• Website disclaimers can be thorough or short.
  • The important part is to let people know that you’re not stepping outside your area of expertise.

• This is essential as it is your base layer of legal protection.

Step 2: Use a client agreement.

• If your business works one-on-one with clients, it is important to create and use a client agreement.

• A client agreement is a written and signed document that is signed by both parties (yourself and your client).
  • It sets forth the following points:
    • Boundaries
    • Expectations
    • Program description
    • Payment policy
    • Refund policy
    • Dispute Policy
  • It contains all your business policies relating to your clients.

• It avoids miscommunications and ensures assurance between you and your clients.

• It also provides ease of access for your clients and your business. Both parties only need to look in one place in case something comes up.

• As you keep rolling, feel free to revise and refine your client agreement.

Step 3: Register your business.

• This step is about business registration and taxes.

• If you’re a solo business owner especially if you’re just starting out, it’s a huge advantage if you get clear on how you register your business in your local state, province, town, or city.

• It informs your local place that you’re operating a business and helps you comply with your local policies for business owners.
  • It helps you be informed of how to correctly pay your taxes.
  • It lets you know how you can properly file paperwork.
  • It makes your business acknowledged by your local government.

• Registering your business makes you feel official.

• Work with an accountant and/or a bookkeeper to help you figure out your taxes.
  • Paying taxes is the responsibility of any business entity.
  • Paying your taxes boosts your confidence as a business.
  • Delegating your tax computation and other things related will free up a large amount of your time so you can keep your focus on growing your business.

Step 4: Establish your website terms and conditions as well as the privacy policy.

Terms and Conditions

• Your website terms and conditions are a much longer document.
  • Make sure that this is aligned with your website disclaimer.
  • It helps protect all your intellectual property shown on your website from plagiarism.

• This generally protects your website content.

Privacy Policy

• This is the sister document to your terms and conditions.

• It lets visitors who provide their information in exchange for your content know that their provided information will be guided with your privacy policy.

• It helps your business build trust among your website visitors by handling and using their information safely and securely.

• This generally protects your visitor’s information.

• Terms and conditions and privacy policies are two different documents that must be on separate pages.
  • Some countries and territories allow these two exist together in one document.

• These two documents help your business be in better alignment and stand you out from other businesses that don’t have it.

Step 5: Create your Terms of Use.

• This document is sometimes called Service Terms or Terms of Service.

• Terms of Use is a document dedicated to your paid customers.

• Compared to your Client Agreement, this document is your one-to-many legal document.

• It’s a one-sided legal document that talks about your sales terms.
  • It tells people your rules once they purchase your product.

• It has the following elements:
  • Protection of your intellectual property.
  • Language on online commerce transactions.
  • Refund policy.
  • Legal disclaimers.
  • Limitations of liability.

Step 6: Create a corporate entity.

• Once your business expanded, you will have more to protect. This point calls for you to register your business under a corporate entity.

• This may also be called a registered corporation, limited liability company, etc.

• When you form a corporate entity, it separates your liability from the company and you, personally.

• It also creates a lot more credibility and adds a level of sophistication to your business.

• Consult with your local government units to check what corporate entity suits best with your area of expertise.

• It protects your assets and income as your business grows bigger.

Step 7: Create a trademark for your brand.

• Lisa calls this a crowning achievement when you have a trademark for your brand.

• Trademarking is done at the country level, except for EU countries.

• It protects your brand identity in your country to avoid brand confusion with another brand that has a substantially similar name as yours.

• Trademarking lets you presume rightful ownership of your brand’s name.

• In the US, once you’ve registered a trademark, it is good for 10 years and you may renew it after that period.

• Lisa recommends that you seek help from a lawyer when you want to register your trademark.

• It is different from copyright. Copyright protects original creative work such as books, music, movies, software, etc.
  • It is for fixed content. You may copyright your website, but you wouldn’t be able to revise its contents after you receive copyright.

• Trademarking has two phases:
  • If you are claiming a brand, you can use the ™.
  • The next phase is the full trademark application process which when finished, will grant you the ® logo that means a registered trademark.