Business Lawyers Network (Worldwide)

With another blizzard predicted to start this evening, I wanted to pass along some information about winter weather policies. I have received a number of questions about these policies over the past few weeks: must I pay employees if the company is open? What about if the company is closed closed? Must employees be paid if the boss stays home? What is common practice?

As is often the case, there are both legal and business considerations. From the legal perspective, start by considering whether the:

(1) employer is open for business

Roger Glovsky, John Koenig, and I have developed a new service product called the "Information Security Advisor." (See http://www.indigoventure.com/solutions/isadvisor.html.) This product helps an organization set up and run a written information security program (WISP), as required by the Massachusetts regulations (201 CMR 17) that went into effect a few months ago.

As a way to connect with prospective clients, we've put together a 5-question quiz. I'd like you to take the quiz and tell me what you think.

Friday 12/4/09 at 1:00 PM, internet radio program will feature this story. How can you improve your relationship with your manager? How can you get credit for your work? And what if you are the manager of someone with different expertise than you? Go to website talkshoe and search Confidence Coach or click:

www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=63116&cmd=tc

If you can't join live, the program will be recorded and available later.

We just posted Part 3 of the series on winding down a business. Although the concept of winding down a business is a pessimistic proposition, it is often a necessary action. This week's blog provides a good checklist of information for approaching the wind down process. You can find it at: http://www.askthevc.com/blog/archives/2009/11/preparing-to-wi.php.

For earlier posts:

Part 1: How to Wind Down Your Company

As many of you know, I recently moved to Boulder, Colorado, which has a very strong entrepreneurial community. Some people have compared Boulder to a "young Silicon Valley." Like Boston and SF, the venture capitalists play a leading role in encouraging entrepreneurship.

I am pleased to share with you my article on how I use LinkedIn to build and enhance business realtionships. I hope you will find it interesting.

When you read the article, see if you can guess the 10 movie quotes. They just might test your knowledge (and to be fair, I've included the answers at the end).

This article is available at our website at the link below.

Thank you to my colleagues Lawrence J. Sheh, Esq. and Richard S. Creem, Esq. for their feedback and editing assistance.

GizmoFish is inviting all BLN members to a free Lunch and Learn September 29.

In the time it takes to enjoy a complimentary, catered meal, you'll learn:

• How backup and recovery technology has come a long way since the old days of tape backup and even solutions like Symantec Backup Exec

• How new, affordable technology does a full backup every 15 minutes instead of once every 24 hours - so you won't lose a whole day's worth of work

• How 'server virtualization' makes it possible to launch a spare server within 40 minutes of a crash

This law firm specializes in labor/employment, personal injury, and domestic relations litigation. It is also starting to expand into lower-level criminal cases. It has little competition in its area and boasts 80% return business each year. The owner’s cash flow has been consistently high for 5 years. It, and a predecessor firm, have occupied the office for over 30 years.

Even if you are not looking for a practice to buy, you may know of someone who is. Please forward this information to them.

Marc Gudema, CBI
marc@mbabusinessbrokers.com
BayState Business Brokers

Here is a recent case that might be of interest to you or someone you know.

A U.S. District Court judge recently held an officer and partner in a startup company personally liable under the MA Wage Act for payment of deferred and unpaid wages to his partner, even though the wages were expressly contingent on the company achieving profitability before it was to be paid (and in fact, profitability was never achieved).

If anyone on BLN has experience working with barter/exchange companies, I would like to chat with you. I can be reached at 781-676-1900 x2.

A BLN member would like to start accepting credit cards as payment for legal services and asked whether I could recommend a merchant processing vendor. Our firm does not accept credit cards, but this is a topic that seems to be coming up more often. I thought other BLN member may be able to make some recommendations, which I can post on the LEXpertise website.

Do any of you accept credit cards for professional services? Are there vendors you would recommend?

[RPG: Excellent list of responses. Be sure to read James Bolan's comment and the article on ethics issues relating to gredit card payments]

Does anyone know of any good patent brokers, particularly any who are willing to work for a seller (patent owner) on a pure contingency (success) fee basis? I am looking for such a service to assist clients who have obtained patents, or who have patent applications pending, but who have either been unable to commercialize the invention or who have run out of funds to pursue their patent or application. Such people often have created valuable technology, if only they could find a buyer or licensee.

MCLE recently upgraded its website and started a newsletter, called MCLE ThisWeek™, that features free forms and articles on CLE topics. You can register for the newsletter at the MCLE website.

For business lawyers, this week's newsletter featured a free download of the Registration and Reporting Requirements of the Federal Securities Laws from the Corporate Practice Series: MCLE BasicsPlus! I assume this link is only good for a week. So, download it now!

I am investigating providing an online portal for my clients. My dream portal would enable me to:

- send drafts of documents to clients for review, without a size limit to the documents; receive notification of when client has downloaded documents (I currently use Pipeline Exchange (www.pipelinexi.com) for this);

- receive feedback from clients on drafts;

- send documents to clients for signature; obtain electronic signatures on those documents;

We just updated the website and added a new feature:

Groups
You can now join one of our groups or create your own! This new groups feature makes it easy to send email to all group members and organize information related to group activities. Forums, weblinks and events can be tagged to show only in your groups or shared with the public. You can even add an RSS feed for your group's latest news. Go to http://lexpertise.net/og to check it out!

Attached is an updated copy of the Choice of Entity Chart.

Feel free to post comments or rate this content by clicking on the "Add review" button at the top of this page.

Note: Use of the chart is licensed under Creative Commons License, Attribution Share-Alike 3.0.

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