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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.
The UK's road traffic laws are designed to promote road safety and to protect members of the public. The laws are relatively inflexible to make it easier for the authorities to prosecute offenders, hand out fines and to disqualify dangerous drivers.
Legal arguments in road traffic cases often focus on how harsh the sentencing should be. Should someone be disqualified for six months, 18 months, or not at all? A joy-rider speeding is vastly different from a nurse who is caught speeding after having been unavoidably delayed on her way to a shift on an emergency ward. All sorts of factors can make a court pass a tougher, or more lenient, sentence.
Much of the law is complex and technical. When defending a case, a lawyer will often focus on whether the authorities followed the correct procedures at every stage of the legal process. If they have not, the charges may be invalidated.
Nearly 600,000 traffic offence cases pass through the courts each year, mostly in the magistrates' courts, with the more serious offences being dealt with in the Crown Court. [Source: Ministry of Justice; 2017]
Penalties range from a fine to imprisonment. Many traffic offences carry a range of penalty points. While some involve obligatory disqualification from driving, in many cases the courts have the choice of whether to disqualify or not.
If you accumulate twelve or more penalty points in a three-year period, you are liable to a minimum disqualification for six months, unless you can demonstrate that this would cause you exceptional hardship.
If you are facing proceedings in the courts for a driving offence, you should seek expert legal advice about your prospects of a defence and the likely penalties in the event of conviction.