Digitizing legal services is a considerable leap to help small business owners. The law is often inaccessible to small business owners. Small businesses are unlike big corporations that have a whole team of legal advisers. Ordinary people often resort to the internet to learn about handling legal paperwork, filing taxes, and knowing labor codes.
It is often the case that ignorance of the law leads people to commit legal mistakes. How many people know the difference between civil and criminal cases? Which offenses and crimes lead to jail time? Who do people go to if they need to take care of bail processes?
So many transgressions could be avoided if there were easy access to legal services. Most people find legal matters daunting when it should not be the case. The following are legal areas that every small business owner like you should be familiar with:
Trademark Laws
The name of your business is one of the first things you need to establish in the early stages of planning your business. You need to be aware of trademark laws. Trademark law protects your business name. Similarly, other business names and entities related to other companies are also protected by these laws.
This means that you cannot copy the logo, slogan, or name of another business. A business can sue you even if the similarity of your names is accidental.
Labor Laws
Sooner or later, you will be hiring employees to help you with the business so you should be familiar with laws related to employment. Every person deserves proper compensation, and if they don’t receive it, they have the right to sue.
Such laws govern the prevention of discrimination in the workplace and the existence of measures to avoid harassment. The job application, recruitment, and training practices also fall under these laws.
To avoid ending up tangled in lawsuits, you should be familiar with laws governing compensation, employment taxes, insurance, and more.
Tax Laws
Taxes are already a complicated process for individual persons to navigate. It is even more complex when you file taxes for your small business. Making a mistake in the process of filing taxes can lead to severe consequences.
Aside from these three laws, there are more that you should learn and be prepared for. There are requirements for licenses and permits that you should accomplish before you can operate a business. The obtaining and processing of required documents take a while.
Of course, you’ll need a business operation license. There is more paperwork aside from that. You also have to apply for a sales tax license, know the zoning rules, and process a land-use permit for the physical establishment you will use for your operation.
You also have to find your way around legal entities. This will dictate how much you pay in taxes and how much you are responsible for damages from your business actions.
How Digitization Can Address This Problem
A digital legal service could help you navigate these complicated processes. This is not to say that technology will replace lawyers anytime soon.
Instead, digitizing such services can help law firms connect with their clients better and cut on time. This works the same way as Facebook business pages use bots to help customers with their different needs.
You will be clicking on links until you get to the part that you need. Suppose the problem can’t be solved using the pre-selected questions and prompts. In that case, that is the time that the bot connects you to a human customer service representative.
Legal services can also adopt these technologies to streamline their many tasks as well. Although it will probably take a more complicated process to execute this, technology has proven nearly nothing is impossible.
Artificial Intelligence in Legal Counsel
Since one of the issues that hinder business owners from accessing legal services is the price, using AI technology can help reduce operational costs. A challenge was launched in the United Kingdom in 2019 to widen access to legal support. The cash prize for the challenge goes to whoever comes up with a tech solution that addresses the problem with the accessibility of the law.
Their goal is to improve the legal system through technology. The participants aimed to make services efficient and even transfer the court process to the online stage.
Improved access to essential services such as legal counsel will encourage more people to start their own businesses. The existence of reasonably priced legal support will help small enterprises to thrive to achieve their goals.
