Huntley Legal's Blog

You might have conscientiously put data protection agreements in place with all the various external third-party companies you work with. But have you thought about the other companies within your company’s group as third parties in this context?

If your company is part of a group, you probably share and transfer data between different group members. This article explores what you should be doing to manage that process. In this article, we are talking about groups of UK-registered companies (for simplicity).

Let’s start with a definition.

I wrote recently about things to consider when Planning a Joint Venture. This time, I’m digging deeper into what to do about issuing shares in your new joint venture company (JVC) to the new JV owners.

In this pair of articles, you’ll learn about the various types of Joint Venture and the planning you need to do before you set one up.

Part 2 will follow shortly.

What is a Joint Venture?

A Joint Venture (JV) is not a particular ‘thing’. It’s a broad term for a collaboration between two businesses.

In the UK, a JV can be arranged in one of three ways:

Recently, we wrote about The impact of AI on your business activities. This time, we’re exploring what happens if your suppliers use AI.

We’re specifically talking about B2B suppliers of professional services, such as legal or accounting, copywriting or design, and marketing, targeting and implementing ad campaigns.

If these suppliers use AI to work for your business, the implications are wide, and potentially quite serious.

It’s therefore important for you to understand the way the AI been used and how it’s controlled.

Let’s look at some of the issues and risks you need to consider…

It seems everyone’s talking about AI, whether they see it as a magic bullet or something to be afraid of. This is part 1 of 2 articles on the subject of AI and what it means to your business.

Let’s start with a definition…

Manslaughter is a common-law offence that is most usually relevant to the individual, not the organisation where they work.

To be convicted, the individual must:

• Owe a duty of care to the deceased
• Have breached that duty in a grossly negligent way
• Be shown to have such a level of disregard for the deceased’s life that it should be seen as criminal and deserving of punishment

I should point out that there is no requirement for the individual to be aware of the risks of their conduct, but only to have a duty of care and to have breached it.

This article links to my previous one: Health & safety obligations for Directors and Senior Managers.

Whether or not your business is run through a company, that business will have legal obligations with regard to Health & Safety and environmental issues.

For the purposes of this article, I will talk largely about companies because the ways that responsibility (and any failures) play out are quite particular in relation to companies, and there is a very specific issue with companies about when the company and/or its directors or managers are going to have to bear the weight of that responsibility or punishment.

Companies can’t do things by themselves, so it’s the Directors and Senior Managers of each company who have the responsibility to ensure it complies with those legal obligations.

In some circumstances, your legal obligations go beyond simply running the company to ensure it complies and can put you – as the Director or Senior Manager – at risk of personal liability. You have to both:

• Ensure the company does what’s required of it
  AND
• Ensure you do what’s required of you (personally)

For more information, please read this article and the next one.

Let’s face it. Things change. And if you set up your B2B supplier contracts a while ago, chances are you need to refresh something. And you need to go into this with your eyes wide open.

This article outlines some of the features to check and builds on our previous one: Updating a supplier contract (part 1)

Remember, for the purposes of this article, the words ‘contract’ and ‘agreement’ mean the same thing.

You may have spent ages setting up a contract with your supplier intending it to last for a long period. But, during the life of a contract, many things can change. Your needs might have shifted over time, or the supplier’s ability to meet your needs might alter. At some point, you or your supplier is likely to want to update at least some element/s of the contract.

For the most part, you’ll have to get agreement from your supplier if you want to make any changes to the contract between you and them. There is limited scope for you to make changes unilaterally – we’ll deal with that later. We’ll also touch on consumer contracts later.

Mostly, this article is about B2B agreements. Note that we use the word ‘agreement’ and ‘contract’ interchangeably. As there’s quite a lot you need to know, this is part 1 of a 2-part series.

This article builds on the last one, and comprises more of the upcoming changes you need to know. As always, please let me know if you have any questions.