Being your business lawyer means being part of your business team, preferably from the start. A lawyer with a business-oriented attitude helps build bridges to success. We invite you to contact Gordon, Mary, Megan or Lucy to discuss any potential matters or questions you may have with respect to business law and commercial law.
Protecting your concept
What is your business idea, your concept? Our business lawyers in Ottawa and Toronto can help protect your intellectual property rights, prepare confidentiality and non-circumvention agreements, and set you on the right path with partners and employees.
Choosing your business name
Before spending money on advertising and promotion, we can help you choose and protect a name that will make you distinctive without breaching the rights of others. If you’re in a regulated business such as cosmetics, drugs or foods, early involvement with our team will help you select a name you can use in Canada without facing regulatory challenges.
Finding the right market
Even the greatest ideas risk being overlooked without a market to flourish in. Drawing on our vast legal experience and real-world marketing expertise, we can help you identify the market research and evaluation you need to succeed – both from a business and legal perspective. Our business lawyers can also help you navigate the opportunities and risks that come with various forms of advertising and marketing.
Structuring your business
Did you create your business, inherit it or buy it? Do you need an investor or partner? Do you know what form of financing to take? Are you willing to give up equity – and if so, to what extent and under what terms? When structuring your business, there are many variables to consider and just as many options to choose from, including sole proprietorship, partnership, limited partnership and incorporation. That’s why we recommend consulting our lawyers as early as possible.
Financing your business
Where will the money come from to make, market and sell your product or service? If you are negotiating a loan, equity investment or angel financing, you don’t have to do it on your own. Make our business lawyers part of your negotiation team.
Executing your business plan
Products and customers are the keys to orders and revenues. Our lawyers in Ottawa and Toronto offer legal counsel on supply and manufacturing contracts, distribution contracts, agency agreements, warehousing, licencing, packaging and labelling, recalls, tariff classification and arbitration. We can also help you navigate liability insurance (including directors’ and officers’ liability insurance), ‘key man’ insurance and more.
Closing the deal
Many businesses have the perception that lawyers break deals. But legal counsel is not your enemy. At Maclaren Corlett, common business sense is the operative phrase. We help ensure any deal makes sense to you and all involved.
Areas of business and commercial law where we can help
- Sole proprietorship, partnership, incorporation
- Asset purchase, share purchase, buying or selling an interest, inheriting
- Getting registered, partnership agreement, unanimous shareholders agreement
- Decision making, signing officers, types of shares and their rights and benefits
- Financing, loans, security to creditors, capital injections
- Salaries, dividends, bonuses, removal of capital
- Employment agreements, confidentiality agreements, non-circumvention agreements
- Letters of intent, supply contracts, bidding on contracts
- Doing business with family, estate planning, succession
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