Are you interested in a career in law? Or are you interested in starting a corporation and considering hiring a legal team? Whatever your reason for being interested in corporate law, it’s important to have a concise understanding of the uses of law for a corporate enterprise.
In this article, we’ll explore what corporate law is and five reasons why it’s useful so that you can broaden your understanding of the field.
Let’s get into it!
Table of Contents
What Is Corporate Law?
Corporate law is a set of rules and regulations that govern how corporations can do business.
It ensures that a legal board regulates how a company interacts with customers, stakeholders and other corporations. The laws involved with corporate law include everything from regulating the rights and obligations of those involved with the corporation to protecting people from scams within the company.
Most corporations will have dedicated teams of corporate lawyers to handle their legal affairs. This can be very useful, as it means that the group of lawyers will know the company’s history and plans and be able to help them succeed by keeping their activity legal.
#1 Governing Business
The main use of a corporate lawyer team is to ensure business stays ”above board”.
Each country, or in the US, each state has its legal requirements for how to run a corporation. These requirements must continue to be met for a corporation to be considered legal and avoid fines or penalties for illegal activity.
A corporate lawyer can ensure that all business conducted by the corporation is legal, fair and recorded. They can prevent any issues from arising by providing proof that every transaction and acquisition made was legal and meeting state requirements.
Their job is to mediate between parties, checking that all documents, finances and other exchangeable mediums meet legal requirements. This includes mergers, acquisitions, sales of shares, hiring new employees and more.
#2 Contractual Law
Contracts are an important part of running a corporation.
They will be used whenever a business deal or transaction is made to have written evidence of the terms and conditions both parties agree to. This is important as it proves that the transaction is legally binding; therefore, the contract must contain every arrangement detail.
Lawsuits may occur when there is a breach of contract, leaving the company liable for money if they do not have evidence that a term was included. To protect the corporation as best as possible, corporate lawyers will have contractual experts on their team to help ensure this doesn’t happen.
#3 Shareholder Agreements
Shareholders are people who hold stakes within a corporation.
Usually, a shareholder will buy their way into a company by offering a certain amount of money for a certain percentage of the total corporation. Therefore, majority shareholders will have more influence internally and reap more profit from the business’s ROI.
To ensure each stakeholder gets what is rightfully theirs and to ensure that nobody tries to get more money from the corporation than they’re entitled to, it’s important to have corporate lawyers to govern stakeholder action.
Corporate lawyers can also aid in the process of stakeholder management. For example, changing contracts if someone decides to buy more stakes in the company or redistributing if someone decides to sell their shares.
#4 Corporate Restructuring
One thing that differentiates a corporation from a smaller business is that the corporation exists as its own entity.
Usually, there will be people within the corporation that lead it (majority shareholders), but unlike a small business, it isn’t solely attached to one person. This means that when you invest in a corporation, you can only lose what you’ve invested if something goes wrong.
As a result, there are often staff reshuffles within a corporation, with people leaving certain roles and entering others. To ensure this remains legal, a corporate lawyer can help to provide new contacts for each corporate reshuffle.
#5 Mergers And Acquisitions
A merger is a combination of two things into one, and the term is most commonly used in business to refer to when two businesses decide to merge into one larger business.
A merger can be a great way to benefit two companies; however, it will require them to decide on what they want to be called and a large reshuffle in management to decide who is in charge.
An acquisition is similar. However, when a company acquires another, the company they have purchased will be dissolved into their own.
For example, if a large company like Apple were to purchase a smaller phone company called ”Ultra Phone”, Ultra Phone’s products and intellectual property would become a part of Apple for them to use as they wish. They may choose to keep Ultra Phone as a separate entity, or they may choose to dissolve Ultra Phone and sell their products as Apple products with a rebrand.
Both of these things require a significant amount of company restructuring. A corporate lawyer will be incredibly important here to ensure everyone gets what they are entitled to and that everything is legal.
Final Thoughts,
Overall, corporate law is incredibly important for protecting the rights of all individuals involved and the business as a whole. There are many uses for corporate law, which will often intersect with different legal proceedings, such as commercial and contractual law.
