Legal volunteers meet with entrepreneurs who seek advice or assistance with formalizing the legal structure of their businesses, including for example, by forming legal entities (e.g., LLCs or corporations); drafting operating agreements or bylaws; and creating partnership terms between business partners. Volunteers will also provide entrepreneurs with general advice and information concerning ongoing corporate governance obligations and responsibilities. Legal volunteers will assist entrepreneurs with drafting the appropriate corporate document and/or preparing and filing appropriate documents with the applicable authority.

Legal volunteers will conduct a “knockout” search of client’s business / product name, logo, and/or slogan; review the results with the client; and provide basic advice on trademark registration advantages and process—including a non-binding estimate of the likelihood of successful registration, generally focused on questions related to the level of similarity to existing marks and/or “mere descriptiveness” of the proposed marks.

Legal volunteers will review clients’ websites and edit existing or template Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for use on clients' websites. The templates include extensive practice notes for the attorneys which, in conjunction with a training, allow virtually any corporate counsel to ask the client questions and determine from their responses what the appropriate edits are and explain the resulting contracts to the clients.

Legal volunteers review/update a client’s existing contracts or assist them with drafting new agreements. If the client has an existing agreement, each volunteer team will receive the agreement in advance of any client consultation, and during the consultation, will review the agreements with the client, explain key terms, and, where appropriate, provide suggested revisions or flag areas for potential negotiation. If the client needs a new agreement drafted (e.g., a wholesale agreement), the legal volunteers will meet with the client to discuss their contract needs and proposed business arrangement, and assist with drafting an agreement that the client can use going forward.

Small business entrepreneurs often face challenging legal decisions related to their first hires. Legal volunteers will provide one-on-one counsel to businesses facing these decisions. Most consultations will focus on the appropriate classification of the business’s current or prospective workers, and may also include counseling clients on threshold issues regarding their obligations and responsibilities as an employer—including with respect to wages and benefits.