Ask The Business Lawyer

Join me on September 22nd as I share my thoughts, lessons, and humor on business partnerships with the Twitterverse!  Yes, it's a brave new world I'm entering, thanks to Melinda Emerson, The Small Biz Lady, and her #smallbizchat show.  Every Wednesday, she hosts a weekly Twitter chat – focusing on everything that small business owners need to know about running and sustaining their business. Follow @smallbizchat for updates via Twitter and @SmallBizLady for her regular small biz updates.

Here's just a few of the tasty morsels I'll be sharing:

1. How do you know?  How do you know when someone is the right partner for you? Unlike romance, you don't want to go on gut alone.  Think carefully about why you need a partner in the first place, and the skills/benefits you want him or her to bring to the table.  If you do your internal "homework" in advance, you'll be able to see with clear eyes . . . and not get swayed by empty promises. Would you marry after a single coffee in Starbucks?
2. Do I need a written agreement with friends?Absolutely -- perhaps even more than with others. With friends, you have a special asset that needs protecting: your friendship. This is the time to be more formal, not less.
3. What areas tend to get business partnerships in trouble? Management (the who-does-what) in the company.  Money (need I say more?). Moving on (when you need to leave the business, for whatever reason). All three are hot buttons and ripe for finger-pointing, fights, blaming, and litigation when you haven't been clear about what you expect.

Are there other issues around business partnerships that have you confused? Concerned? Let me know by leaving your comments.  You can follow me on Twitter, too (@NinaKaufman), for more business partnership updates!

The United States Supreme Court ruled recently that as long as an employer has a legitimate work-related purpose, and the search is reasonable in scope, then employers can review their employees’ text messages when those messages are sent or received on an employer-provided device. 

Attorney Bradley Gross, Esq., parses through the decision and what it really means for employers on his Business Technology Law Blog. Along with a link to the Supreme Court's decision, Gross looks at:

• What is a legitimate "work-related purpose"?
• What is meant by "reasonable in scope"?
• As an employee, can you expect your electronic communications to be private?
• What can employers do to avoid being dragged through the court system to fight the issue int he higher Court in the land? (and yes, there's an answer)

Sylvester Stallone's latest opus, The Expendables, was released in movie theaters this past weekend, and I have to confess that I've been dying to see it.  Bash-em-up-smash-em-up films are a kind of guilty pleasure for me.  Van Damme, Stallone, Schwartzenegger, Statham, Li, Willis--many of the actors in the film fill my list.  And as long as they stick honorably to the genre of men fighting men or Evil (and not using women as pawns or sex objects), I'll happily plunk down my $13 and sit for 2 hours mindlessly munching popcorn.

The Expendables didn't disappoint.  As John Notle on BigHollywood.com points out, it's classic B-movie fare.  It wasn't just the simplistic plot:  good-guy-misfits take-down-bad-third-world-dictators-and-their-U.S.-Government-puppeteers.  It wasn't just that it was rife with exceptionally muscled men over the age of 40 (my demographic) playing action heroes.  (Nu? Should I turn up my nose up at eye candy?).  It wasn't just that every once in a whole, the camera caught Stallone with his dark eyebrows and goatee looking like an older Robert Downey Jr. in Ironman (yes, another guilty pleasure; bought the soundtrack, too, for the pounding AC/DC music).  It wasn't just the pyrotechnics and bad guys going "splat!" in multiple directions when mowed down by machine guns.

It's that, tucked behind the humor of grown-up boys poking fun at their friends to show they care, there was a message: That honor matters more than a paycheck.  That having a moral code matters.  That sometimes, you help other people and you take a risk because it's the right thing to do.  And sometimes, you help others by making tough decisions that reflect your own self-respect.

I think of the risk I took starting a business partnership--not for the visions of the paycheck, but for the bigger dream of those I could serve.  And I think of the touch choices I had to make when ending the partnership, because I needed to serve my own self-respect as well as my client's needs.  

Does that make make me a saint?  Far from it. But I can be proud of my decisions because they were a product of my own moral code, which includes respect for myself and others.

What matters most to you in your business?

How do you pack for a trip down memory lane?

For Proust, all it took was the smell of some coffee and pastry. For me, it was today's tweet from @Brenna_E on @mashable regarding a "Giant Shout-Out to Ayn Rand."

In high school, a friend of mine was forced to digest Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which she detested for each of the 974 pages.  I vowed, at that tender age, never to saddle myself with such a wordy, quasi-philosophical tome.

But 10 years is a long time to keep such a promise.  Surprisingly, I found myself devouring Rand's The Fountainhead while in law school.  I justified it as a way to take a break from (avoid?) my fed tax class. I had also been selected to join a moot court team ... so I suppose I wanted an excuse to procrastinate on writing my legal brief.  The trials and tribulations of Howard Roark caught my imagination. Especially his development of Monadnock Valley.  Roark had been hired--a la The Producers-- in the hopes that he would fail; the project turned out to be a smashing success.

Fast forward three months, and my Boston University Law moot court team had made it to the final round of our competition. Frankly, that we made it past the first round was an absolute miracle. The previous year's team was knocked out of the competition very early. (Plus, they had several straight-A students on the team).  The competition took place in Chicago, so we were outside of our natural turf. All of the other teams had a phalanx of coaches and trainers and moot court prep staff--like they were boxers with an entourage. Our team was a rag-tag group of three "orphans." No coach, no trainer, no cheerleaders; just three law students hoping to make good. 

Because we had made the final round, we were entitled to attend the celebration rubber-chicken dinner at Chicago's Union League Club.  The competition winners would be announced during the meal (as if that weren't enough to either make you sick or lose your appetite altogether).

As my teammates and I walked the unfamiliar streets to get to the dinner, I felt something within me say "Look up." Having been so focused on "when we win or wouldn't we?" I was paying absolute no attention to the architecture of Chicago's downtown. I stopped for a moment, to look at a building across the street. It had an imposing, stone façade. And carved across the doorway in thick, black letters was the word "MONADNOCK."

My team went on to win First Place and Best Brief at the competition. (Oh, you should have seen the tears from the other competitors!) Us, the Boston University Law school orphans--we walked away with the prizes. Like Howard Roark, we were not expected to do well. We weren't the smartest kids in our class. We weren't from the Midwest. We didn't have outside support. (Even BU's Moot Court Director was skeptical of our chances.) 

But, against all odds, we stole the show. :-)  Call it our "Monadnock Moment."

What's yours?

Unpaid internships used to be all about "the experience"--an opportunity for young students to break into a new field, to gain contacts, to explore new career possibilities. But with the current administration's increased focus on enforcing labor law violations, small businesses could well fall into the enforcement net.

While this Daily Dose post covered summer internships, it also applies when you're looking to fill the spot without filling the person's wallet--in a word (or two), without pay.