Huntley Legal's Blog

The purpose of collaborating in business is to achieve more together than you can on your own.

Much like a marriage, a business collaboration needs to be well thought through if it’s to work well.

Why you might collaborate

Collaboration is usually to focus on a particular product or piece of business. For example, you might want to sell a new kind of face cream or software service, and need to bring in elements that you lack.

One business might have the skillset, the other a list of prospects. One might do all the marketing, while the other does the actual work. Or the parties might invest in the business to different degrees.

Structure your relationship

Any business collaboration depends on contributions from both companies, and can be set up in different ways:

I've recently been dealing with a lot of new and existing supplier contracts, which inspired me to compile this article highlighting six of the things that should put you on alert. There are loads more, which we might cover another time.

The advice relates to suppliers offering goods, services, or a mixture of both.

These are some of the issues to deal with before you sign.

When buying a business, you need to decide whether to buy all the shares and so transfer ownership, or whether to buy the business outright as an asset purchase.

Here are some of the things to consider when you are preparing to buy a business as an asset purchase – because once you've made the jump, it may be too late.

Clients often ask me whether an agreement is valid if it's confirmed by an email or click-through process.

The answer is... it depends.

For one thing, it depends on what the agreement is about.

An email or click-through may not be adequate if the agreement is about selling land, setting up a Power of Attorney or Trust, or arranging a guarantee. In these cases, the other side is likely to require higher levels of formality, and may demand a 'wet' signature, on paper, in ink, written by a person.

When you're preparing to terminate a contract with a supplier, you need to end it correctly and consistently with your objectives.

If the contract offers you a notice period and there has been no breach on either side, it might be appropriate to give notice and get out that way.

If the real reason you want to end the relationship with your supplier is because they badly breached the contract, by quietly giving notice you may lose the opportunity to claim damages.

Here are five things to remember when terminating a contract with a supplier.

As a shareholder in a startup or an established company, you really ought to know your rights.

Being aware of your rights is useful anytime, but especially if you're having problems, want to extract yourself from an uncomfortable situation, or simply want to make your voice heard.

However, many shareholders are surprisingly unaware of their rights. Some imagine their rights are greater than they really are; while others imagine they have no rights at all.

Please note that this article relates to shares you may hold in a private limited company (not one that is traded on the stock exchange, and not an LLP).

Almost every professional firm and independent consultant uses a letter of engagement to manage their contractual relationship with their clients. This practice is typical in many sectors including IT, accountancy, legal, financial, training and HR.

However, issues often arise when the letter of engagement is not being used as well as it might be. This article details some of the key things you need to think about when preparing yours.

You've probably heard about GDPR coming into force from May 2018.

You might even have started thinking about the impact on your supplier and customer data.

But have you thought how GDPR affects the data you hold on your employees?

For most companies, that's the largest, most extensive and varied data set you collect – and it's likely to be inconsistent and fragmented across different systems.

If a mega-company the size of Carillion can go bankrupt, it can happen to anyone – including your key customers and suppliers.

It's easy to think that you can simply set up a contract and get on with the work, with no reason to go back and look at the original agreement.

However, inspired by the Carillion experience, this article gives six good reasons why you should review your contracts regularly.

As you know, I've specialised in company law for a long time, since almost but not quite, the year dot. Here are some of the most common shareholder regrets I've heard over the years.

Example 1: Not knowing enough about the other shareholders

This is not an unusual problem. The most recent example I have heard was really a regret in the making, and it absolutely stunned me.