At What Point Do You Need To Legally Protect Your Business?

This blog post was first published on 25th May 2019

When it comes to getting legal protection for your blog or business people tend to be in one of two camps.

They either get it organised on day one.
Or they put it off for as long as possible.

The approach which is right for you and your business depends on what stage you're at.

Try asking yourself, what do I need to protect? If the answer is nothing then you may not need to look into legally protecting blog or business at this time. On the other hand, you might want to start considering legally protecting your blog and business if:

1. CONTRACTS

You have business relationships in place now - you may want to protect you and your customers with a 1:1 services agreement. Until you are working with clients 1:1 you don’t necessarily need an agreement, but of course once you get a new client you want a contract ready to go.

2. REFUND POLICIES

People purchase e-books or programmes from you, you could look at putting in place terms of business and a refund policy so that your customers get the best experience. Remember there are different refund policies for buying online vs in person contracts and electronic downloads vs services which you need to differentiate.

3. DISCLAIMERS

Perhaps you’re in the health and fitness industry and have a blog where you share workouts, run drills and recipes you might want to consider putting a couple of disclaimers in place to avoid people hurting themselves and trying to claim from you because they followed your advice. You might not be in the health and fitness industry but you may still need to be considering whether you’re giving advice and the protection you need.

4. COPYRIGHT

Or maybe you've been spotting some very similar content in someone else's blog and social media channels. You may want to get a copyright policy up on your blog to help protect your unique ideas.

5. PRIVACY POLICY

There are other policies which are required by law. If you capture other people’s data on your website then you need to ensure you have a privacy policy in place which covers all of the required aspects of how you handle and protect your client’s data. You also need to make sure you have the business practices in place so that you do protect the data the way that you say you will.

6. TRADE MARK

Perhaps you’ve had an absolutely brilliant idea for a course name or service which no-one else is offering and you’re unsure whether to get the trade mark first or test it out for a few weeks. The one thing I ask my clients all the time is, “How would you feel if you did decide to get the trade mark tomorrow and someone else had registered it yesterday?” If the answer is that you would feel like you had lost an important business asset then it’s time to give serious consideration to registering your mark. Click here for our Trade Mark offers.