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Take Action: Former Employees that Steal Intellectual Property or Confidential Information and their New Employers Can Be Held Responsible for the Damage to Your Business
If your employee parts ways with your company, you are entitled to your property back. Your property could include a work cellphone, laptop, notebooks, presentations, customer lists, drawings, and other documents. All of those are valuable, and your former employee cannot keep them or use them for their own personal gain.For example, you may have owned a lawn-care business. You may have provided a former employee with a cellphone and laptop and access to customer lists, work orders, and landscaping designs and plans. These lists might diagram how Mrs. Smith likes her garden planted every sp... Read More »
5 Big Reasons to Seek Legal Counsel for a “Friends and Family” Loan or Business Transaction
The easiest and most cautious approach to business deals with friends and family is to avoid them altogether. However, a more practical approach would be to document them cost effectively through a Houston business attorney. Here are five simple reasons why you should get a business attorney to documents your friends and family transaction: The first reason to seek legal counsel for a friends and family deal is: memories fade. Friends and family deals are usually very informal and arise at a time of unique opportunity, stress and need. People under stress or financial duress do not always t... Read More »
Is Reading Your Employee's Email a Good Idea?
As an employer, you provide an email account and internet service while at the office. If you suspect the employee of misconduct, like stealing or altering time sheets, can you look through their email accounts to confirm your suspicions?If you provide the server space and email address to the employee, as a general rule you may read those emails. If you discover that the email sent from the business account is actually personal in nature, but does not otherwise show employee misconduct, you should not continue to read it and you should not use the contents of that email for any purpose. Ho... Read More »
Why you must have Premarital and Post-marital Agreements for your Business
Good friends regularly enter into business relationships and partnerships on a handshake because they do not want pay a lawyer. They would rather spend the money on the business. Alternatively, they attempt to draft documents themselves or purchase dangerous non-state specific forms from an online sources such as Legalzoom. Unless, you want to destroy your business and incur substantial attorneys in the future, you should consult a business attorney to prepare the numerous contracts, agreements, and corporate documentation necessary to avoid disputes between partners and protect the owners ... Read More »
6 Reasons You Should Consider “Retaining” a Small Business Attorney as Outside General Counsel
A general counsel is an attorney employed exclusively by a private company on a “W-2” basis that works on legal and non-legal tasks. An outside general counsel is an attorney that works outside the company on a regular “1099” contract basis to advise a business and its owners on matters the business or the owners request. Confidentiality / Objectivity. A traditional general counsel and outside general counsel both have fiduciary duties to an organization as a whole. However, a traditional general counsel’s objectivity and loyalty is routinely challenged when their full time employment or j... Read More »
4 Action Items You Should Employ with a Non-Paying Customer Before Contacting an Attorney
Every business owner will, at one time or another, have customers that do not pay. When this happens, it is important that you employ the following to protect your business, money, and interests: Communicate with the Customer in Writing. An invoice or purchase order is formally the first demand that a customer pay money owed so long as it indicates a deadline (e.g., net 30 terms). When a delinquent customer fails to pay, you should send them a kind reminder (the “second demand”). A second demand can be in the form of a past due notice applying interest, or a friendly email from accounts re... Read More »
