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Setting up a business involves complying with a range of legal requirements. Find out which ones apply to you and your new enterprise.
What particular regulations do specific types of business (such as a hotel, or a printer, or a taxi firm) need to follow? We explain some of the key legal issues to consider for 200 types of business.
While poor governance can bring serious legal consequences, the law can also protect business owners and managers and help to prevent conflict.
Whether you want to raise finance, join forces with someone else, buy or sell a business, it pays to be aware of the legal implications.
From pay, hours and time off to discipline, grievance and hiring and firing employees, find out about your legal responsibilities as an employer.
Marketing matters. Marketing drives sales for businesses of all sizes by ensuring that customers think of their brand when they want to buy.
Commercial disputes can prove time-consuming, stressful and expensive, but having robust legal agreements can help to prevent them from occurring.
Whether your business owns or rents premises, your legal liabilities can be substantial. Commercial property law is complex, but you can avoid common pitfalls.
With information and sound advice, living up to your legal responsibilities to safeguard your employees, customers and visitors need not be difficult or costly.
As information technology continues to evolve, legislation must also change. It affects everything from data protection and online selling to internet policies for employees.
Intellectual property (IP) isn't solely relevant to larger businesses or those involved in developing innovative new products: all products have IP.
Knowing how and when you plan to sell or relinquish control of your business can help you to make better decisions and achieve the best possible outcome.
From bereavement, wills, inheritance, separation and divorce to selling a house, personal injury and traffic offences, learn more about your personal legal rights.
For many businesses, information technology (IT) is much more than just a business tool. Purchasing the right IT and using it effectively is critical to business success. As part of your IT management, you should make sure you understand and manage the legal issues involved.
While it can be tempting to specify what you want to buy (ie these machines, that software, those services), with complex purchases usually it's better to provide your supplier with a specification of what you want it to do. This puts you in a stronger position if the solution fails to deliver.
A clear, written contract is always a good idea, particularly for complex development work, which has a tendency to overrun on time and costs.
Bear in mind that while hardware can be purchased outright, software legal arrangements are more complex. Software is typically acquired on licence, with the software agreement governing how you can use the software, for example, how many copies you can use. Software copyright remains with the creators or publishers of the software. If you are commissioning bespoke software, you will probably want agreement that copyright will be yours.
Given the importance of IT systems, appropriate maintenance, security and disaster prevention planning are essential. If your systems hold data on individuals, personal information security is a priority to comply with data protection regulations. Consider your legal obligations carefully when investigating storage devices for this data.
For critical IT systems, you should have clear maintenance contracts and service level agreements. These should set out routine servicing arrangements, how quickly emergency services will be provided if systems fail, what alternative provisions are in place and so on. Testing out system backup and disaster recovery plans on a regular basis is worthwhile. Once things have gone wrong - it could be too late.
Your website can be a powerful business tool, but it can also expose you to a wide range of legal issues. Both the design and content of your website must respect other people’s copyright. And to prevent later disagreements, you should insist that your website designer assigns design right and copyright to you.
If you are using your website for marketing and e-marketing, you need to meet additional requirements such as ensuring that the content is not misleading and provides clear information on prices. If you sell online through your website, you also need to consider further issues covering e-commerce and distance selling. These topics are covered in our marketing and selling section.
It makes sense to include appropriate disclaimers and statements to limit your legal risk. For example, you may want to publish terms of use, a copyright statement and a privacy policy.