9 January 2025
2 mins
As the new year begins, we’re sharing our top five legal tips to help you keep your business on solid ground. These essential actions will ensure you’re legally prepared for the months ahead.
- Check your contracts
When was the last time you read your own terms from start to finish? Are they easy to read through, do they cover your current services and most importantly, do they protect you? Also look out for ‘auto-renew’ clauses in your supplier contracts, software licences, telecoms, HR and managed print services are notorious for these! - Check your AI
If you’re using third-party AI (ChatGPT, Midjourney, Claude etc) make sure you’ve read the licence agreement you’ve signed up to, paying particular attention to training data, data sharing and IP ownership. - Check your team’s contracts
When was the last time you listed all of your employees, contractors or freelancers and ticked off the signed contract for each of them? When were the contracts last reviewed? It’s a big year for employment law changes for UK businesses so it’s worth getting ahead of this now. More updates to follow on this! - Check your contracts with your business partners
If you’ve got a limited company, have you got your shareholders agreement sorted? What about directors service contracts? If you’re running a partnership, partnership agreements are just as important to check. Things such as what happens when there’s death, a fall out, a change in direction, a future sale and a restructure should all be considered in these agreements. - Check your Intellectual Property (IP)
Especially if you’re using third party contractors or freelancers that are creating IP for you. Unless you have a contract that makes it clear that you will own the IP your contractor has created for you, you will not own it. We’ve seen lots of businesses misunderstand IP ownership and it can be very costly.
If you need support with any of the above so please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Ryan has helped a vast number of businesses protect and control their intellectual property as well as drafting and advising on consumer and commercial contracts.
