Legal issues impacting family businesses

John Reed, a longtime volunteer for the High Center and attorney at Corporate Partner at Barley Snyder, LLC, has a new blog at Fig Magazine. Here's John's post, reprinted with permission:

Welcome to my blog on legal issues impacting small businesses. I need a nifty name for the blog and as lawyers are not known for their artistic creativity, I’m up for suggestions.

If you want to read a little about my background, you can check that out at http://www.barley.com/.

My practice is a general business practice split into two areas – counseling family and closely held businesses and mergers and acquisitions. Regarding my counseling family and closely held businesses, I work with very small and very large family and closely held businesses and really act as a virtual in-house attorney for these businesses. Small and family held businesses are really the backbone of the U.S. economy both from an employment perspective and revenue generating perspective. Small and family owned businesses have some of the same problems, risks and challenges that large corporations have and also have some unique challenges arising from their size and ownership structure. One common theme I hear from my clients is that they often feel isolated as they don’t have a large staff to rely on or may not have a strong group of outside advisors to help guide them.

In this blog, my attempt will be to cover topics on which I have received questions from clients or issues with which I have seen small and family owned businesses struggle. Some of these subjects will include:

• Should I use some type of entity to run my business or am I safe operating it as a sole proprietorship? 
• What types of business entitites are available and what are the differences (limited liability company, S corporation, C corporation, general partnership.etc.)
• How to build relationships with a group of outside advisors 
• Should I have a board of directors or board of advisors? 
• Employee issues, such as, non-competes and non-solicitation issues, concepts to retain good employees, etc.

I’m also certainly open to answering questions from you, so please let me know if you have them.

Finally, I am a novice at this blogging concept, and, as I said, lawyers are not known for their creativity (or ability to write in plain English). So, please bear with me and let me know of any suggestions you have to make this a more effective (and fun) blog.

Disclaimer
This Blog Site is made available by the lawyer or law firm publisher for educational purposes only as well as to give you general information and a general understanding of the law, not to provide specific legal advice. By using this blog site you understand that there is no attorney client relationship between you and the Blog/Web Site publisher. The Blog/Web Site should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a licensed professional attorney in your state.