Online legal services have made basic small business legal work more affordable than ever. These online legal service providers can help you incorporate your business, file for trademarks, copyrights, patents and even provide you with basic business contracts at a very low price.  Properly structuring your business is one of the most important moves you can make when setting up your business.  Doing so can protect your personal assets from claims made against your business by an employee, a vendor or a customer.

It’s also important to take steps to protect the things that define your business.  These include your company name, slogans or bylines, logo, customer lists and other proprietary information.  Many startup companies are reluctant to spend money on these things when they are just getting started.  But there are two good reasons to reconsider:  First, the cost for these basic legal services has come down as more online legal services have streamlined the process.

The second reason, which is too often overlooked, is that your business might inadvertently be infringing on someone else’s trademarks or copyrights. Some companies have been forced to change their names years after starting, because they didn’t do a proper trademark search and chose the same name as a company they never heard of before. By taking the steps to start your business on a solid legal foundation, you’ll save time and money in the long run.