The Blog For Business Law

— By Gerry RichardsonOctober 29, 20123 Comments

When Must Employers Give Time Off for Voting?

State Laws Frequently Require Employers to Allow Employees to Miss Some Working Time on Election Day to Vote With Election Day coming soon, employers may confront employee requests for time off to vote. Some employees may even expect their employer to allow them to miss work…

— By Gerry RichardsonSeptember 11, 20122 Comments

Missouri Supreme Court Rewrites and Enforces Non-Compete Agreement

The Supreme Court Avoids the Opportunity to Apply Its Prior Reasoning Critical of Overly Broad Non-Competition Agreements The Court decides cases involving non-competition and non-solicitation agreements only infrequently. In 2006, the Missouri Supreme Court balanced the right of a former employee to compete against a…

— By Brian RogersAugust 29, 20120 Comments

Resource of the Week: LawHelp Interactive

Looking for free legal forms? Like the idea of automated forms where you answer questions and the document is customized for you? That’s the service LawHelp Interactive provides. Here’s how the service describes itself: LawHelp Interactive helps you fill out legal forms. Answer a series…

— By Brian RogersAugust 28, 20121 Comment

Should You Structure the Sale of Your Business as an Asset Sale or an Equity Sale?

Although deal lawyers generally describe their practice as involving “mergers and acquisitions,” the sale of a small or medium-sized business is usually structured as either an equity sale or an asset sale. In an equity sale, the purchaser buys the equity from the owner(s) of…

— By Brian RogersAugust 22, 20120 Comments

Resource of the Week: commonterms.net

Virtually no one reads website terms of service, but we often have to click “I agree” in order to use a website. And courts generally enforce online terms even when website users don’t read them. I think this is a problem, and I’ve written about…

— By Jim BorchersAugust 20, 20123 Comments

Doing Business As a Corporation? You’re Living in the Past

So, your family business has been a corporation forever. All these years you’ve been dutifully filing your annual report with the Missouri Secretary of State’s office along with your annual fee; and filing the mandatory annual franchise tax return (even though you don’t owe any…

— By Brian RogersAugust 17, 20121 Comment

Friday Web Bits: Soft Skills, BFPP, and Startup CEO Pay

Internet sales tax here we come. Ever wonder why you’re charged sales tax on stuff you buy from one website but not another? Ever wonder whether all websites will eventually collect sales tax on their sales? The Days of Not Collecting Internet Sales Tax Could…

— By Brian RogersAugust 15, 20120 Comments

Resource of the Week: TOS;DR (Terms of Service; Didn’t Read)

In last week’s Resource of the Week post, I highlighted TOSSOS (Terms of Service SOS), a website that provides a summary of the website terms of many popular websites. As we all know, nobody reads online terms of service, but having a cheat sheet can…

— By Amy LangeAugust 14, 20120 Comments

How to Buy Property and Avoid the Cost of Clean-up (Maybe): Part 2

In my last post, I wrote about what a Bona Fide Prospective Purchaser (BFPP from now on) has to do before purchasing property in order to avoid that troublesome Superfund liability. I pointed out that pre-requisites to the property’s purchase were just step 1 and there were some post-requisite…

— By Brian RogersAugust 10, 20120 Comments

Friday Web Bits: Tax Break Blues, Business Books, and Business Selling Tips

Keep your tax break. I took a lot of tax classes in law school. Taxes are complicated. Some businesses are coming to the same conclusion and opting out of taking tax deductions because the compliance costs are just too high, as reported in the Wall…