Bizstartup.ie - Start Up Kit

“It can save a lot of time and costs if a start-up comes to see their solicitor well-prepared,” says Peter O’Neill, solicitor with Mason Hayes+Curran. “It’s good to have discussed your requirements and to have a legal ‘wish-list’ of questions.”

“In the first instance, it might be about setting up a company,” says O’Neill. “Then you have to consider directors’ duties and responsibilities. You will have to have a minimum of two directors when starting a company. Their duties will principally involve always acting in the best interest of the company, but there are statutory obligations that set out what directors have to do. A good lawyer should appraise you quickly of these.

“Depending on the business, if you are say a tech start-up, intellectual property could be a key issue,” says O’Neill.

Put your terms and conditions in place

Contracts are the next thing to consider. “If you’re going to be supplying goods and services, I would recommend that you put a template agreement in place, with your terms and conditions of sale. There’s a whole statute – The Sales of Good Act of 1893 –which is still in existence. If you don’t have your own terms and conditions in place, you’ll be stuck with those rules.”

Read everything that you sign

And be sure to carefully read anything you sign,” he says.

“If as a start-up you’re selling to a large multinational for example, they will usually produce their own rules, and when you’re trying to get up and running you’ll be temped to sign just about anything, but you need to read those agreements carefully too,” says O’Neill. “Say you’re licencing your technology to a large company, you need to check that the contract doesn’t say that when you develop a product for them, all ownership of that development passes to them.”

Draw up a template employment contract

If you’re employing someone, it is a good idea to draw up a template employment contract quickly.

“Again as an employer you’ll have obligations under employment law, and there’d be standard legislation that says you can’t work more than a certain number of hours, but you can exclude that by contract, if you’re in a business where working from nine to five isn’t realistic.”

Get your employment relationship in place

“An important thing that some start-ups don’t note is that If you’re setting up and say you have your buddy from college developing a piece of software for you, if you haven’t formalised an employment relationship, anything they develop for your company will be owned by them. If you have people who are crucial to the success of the business, it is important to get the employment relationship in place as soon as possible.”