COMMERCIAL LEASES: THE DRAFTING PROCESS
You’ve selected a space where you’d like your business to be located. Now you can expect the landlord to offer you a commercial lease. But chances are this document has been prepared either by the landlord or its attorney. Therefore, it’s likely the lease will be...
ETHICS AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT LAW IN ILLINOIS
I’d like to discuss the Illinois Governmental Ethics Act and the State Officials and Employees Ethics Act in greater detail. Both acts are designed to ensure the continued ethical conduct and accountability of government employees. This group encompasses a wide range...
ETHICS
While you may be aware that anyone who holds a position within the Illinois government is subject to ethical standards, you might think this responsibility only applies to senators, representatives and other political workers. Yet the reality is that local government...
MAINTAINING YOUR TRADEMARKS AND SERVICEMARKS
In my last series of posts, I explained how critical it is to protect your company’s image by securing trademarks and/or servicemarks, especially if your business is expanding. Furthermore, I let you know that even after you have successfully obtained federal or state...
CASHIER’S CHECKS: DON’T BE A VICTIM!
In my last post, I presented an overview of the types of fraud that currently are being perpetrated using Cashier’s checks. In this post, I will provide my recommendations on how to best protect yourself from this type of fraud. Since a cashier’s check is designed to...
PROTECTING YOUR COMPANY’S IMAGE: Enforcing Your Trademarks and Servicemarks
What do chapstick, a thermos and aspirin have in common? These iconic brands used to be protected by trademarks, but lost their legal rights over time. Unfortunately, the rightful owners of these brands were not aggressive enough in protecting their images. Now, the...
PROTECTING YOUR COMPANY’S IMAGE: Understanding Trademarks and Servicemarks
In my last blog, I explained the importance of protecting your business’ image once you begin to expand. The goal is to make sure nobody can come along and steal your brand out from under you. And this can be accomplished by obtaining trademarks and servicemarks for...
CASHIER’S CHECKS: NOT ALWAYS GOOD AS GOLD!
In today’s digital age, many transactions are now being done on the Internet. For this reason, my colleagues and I in the legal community have noticed that online fraud cases are on the rise. One of the principle forms of this type of financial deception involves the...
HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT ATTORNEY
In my prior posts, I have stressed the importance of mindfully creating a sound infrastructure for your business, to ensure that it is protected from predictable disasters. I discussed using Non-Disclosure Agreements, employee restrictive cove-nants, key man...
Worker Classification – Part Two
In my last post, I explained the critical importance of properly classifying your workers as either employees or independent contractors. Indeed, I warned you that if you do not classify your workers in accordance with state and federal guidelines, your staff...
Worker Classification
Every business needs workers. So as a small business owner, you must determine how you want to classify the people who work in your company. Basically, this means you have to choose between designating your workers as employees or as independent contractors. However,...
COST OF COLLECTION CLAUSE
In this post, I’ll explain the meaning of the “Cost of Collection ” clause and I will tell you why it’s so crucial that you integrate this provision into the agreements you create with customers. When you own a business of any sort, the business must generate revenue....
UNDERSTANDING RESTRICTIVE COVENANTS
Creation of a business requires a certain amount of trust. That’s because even if you’re the driving force behind your company, you still must rely on others to assist you. The reality is you just can’t perform every role yourself. So, trust has to be part of the...
THE WAVEHOOKS STORY
To illustrate the extreme importance of NDAs and restrictive covenants, a client of mine has consented for me to share in this post his company’s amazing growth experience, due in great part to his ability to confidently bring his product to market without risk that...
Trust, But Restrict
Protecting Intellectual Property When you form relationships with people to broaden your business’ presence in the marketplace, you must bring certain individuals into a highly sensitive domain. There’s really no way around it. In order to get these potential...
BUSINESS OWNERSHIP: AVOIDING A LEADERSHIP DISASTER
Sharing ownership of a business is a great way to pool financial resources and talent. It may occur at the beginning of the life of your business, in the form of a partnership, or it may occur later, in the form of an investor who is seeking equity in a solely owned...