Business Owner or Investor? You need an Entrepreneur Lawyer

As an entrepreneur, time is your most precious asset. And yet, success brings increasing complexity to managing your business, employees, and/or investments: anxiety grows and time slips away. The natural inclination is to consult professionals in reaction to problems. You talk to a corporate lawyer to buy out a partner, then later a real estate lawyer to sell a property or an estate lawyer for your will or family trust, and so on.

Have you ever tried google-searching for “lawyers in your area” once an issue arises? Typically, your “issue” is actually a “set of issues” or a sub-set of a sub-set... Even if you are aware of the critical interplay between the legal areas impacting your investments, taxes and exit; after finally finding the time to have a consultation, you often hear: “sorry, I do not practice in this area, but I know someone who does and can refer you.” A response to a simple question now takes weeks or months. Tick, tock. Tick, Tock.  

Here's an example of how this plays out long term. After years of bouncing around lawyers, your holding structure becomes a Frankenstein’s monster. It’s not that anything has been done “wrong”, but rather that key decisions were made in silos. There are too many cooks in the kitchen – and they are not even talking to each other. Does this sound familiar to you?

A common example I have come across is not properly structuring for the lifetime capital gains exemption (“LCGE”), costing you hundreds of thousands to millions in avoidable taxes!

• Each person has an LCGE of $1.1M of capital gains they can exempt from taxes on the sale of shares in an eligible business (and the $1.1M can be stacked per beneficiary if a family trust is used!).

• Corporate lawyers often advise clients to have a holding company hold their shares in various businesses or properties (which is generally good advice). But you cannot use LCGE if you sell shares through a holding company that also holds other shares!

• So, when you go to sell the business, you can either pay up to $1.1M more in taxes than you should have or delay the sale two (2) years to restructure and become LCGE eligible.

Siloed work often leads, as in the example above, to a suboptimal outcome. Enter:  Entrepreneur Law, a new concept created by TAAG Law to respond to the trend of entrepreneurial demand. This is a holistic approach  that marries the key legal areas you as an entrepreneur need to navigate on a regular basis, but offered by a specialized team of legal professionals that live and breathe your business fundamentals, goals and long-term financial objectives. We always start with learning about you – why are you working yourself to the bone and taking these risks in the first place? For some it is to create the largest exit possible, for others it is legacy, for you it may be a bit of both.

Think of it as added capacity to your advisory Board or your personal, on-demand “in-house” legal counsel. 

We work backwards from your goals to structure (or restructure) your holdings to ensure alignment for the future, and then support you and your businesses through the day-to-day. This enables you to work with a single legal team aware of and dedicated to your personal and long-term intergenerational wealth objectives. This includes the six (6) critical legal areas that impact your success as a business owner or investor:

1. Corporate Law: to structure your businesses, maximize control, facilitate mergers or acquisitions, or raise capital.

2. Estate Law: to leverage tax-efficient strategies such as family trusts or corporate wills and plan for your future to optimize and safeguard the transfer of what you have built to your loved ones (e.g., wills, powers of attorney, trusts, etc.)

3. Real Estate Law: to acquire or dispose of property in a tax-efficient manner (including leveraging capital gains and land-transfer tax exemptions wherever possible), and ring-fencing liability from other assets.

4. Contract Law: to draft / review key agreements needed to mobilize opportunities and risk-manage exposure (e.g., services, contractor or employment agreements, loans and promissory notes, etc.).

5. Intellectual Property: to safeguard your brand, proprietary confidential information, and creative assets and intellectual property (e.g., NDAs, trademarks, copyright, etc.).

6. Dispute Resolution & Small Claims: to resolve commercial and business disputes before they devolve into costly and distracting lawsuits, and to take annoying minor disputes at small claims court off of your plate so you can focus on your priorities.

Where a situation is particularly complex, or a lawsuit is unavoidable, we bring in specialized counsel to get the job done. Our specialized counsel are trusted legal professionals with whom we maintain a strong working relationship. This ensures you get the right expertise for a particular problem, without sacrificing consistency and “corporate memory” (which is often the case when clients need to switch lawyers because their current one cannot serve new needs).

When you work with an Entrepreneur Lawyer, you get the advice and support of someone who not only sees the big picture but is always proactively looking to bring non-legal expertise to the table to further ensure alignment with your goals and mitigate risk. This is why TAAG Law operates under the “TAAG” professional services brand, giving us direct access to TAAG Accounting, Marketing + Design, and Family Office for wealth management for high net-worth individuals and families.

You are an entrepreneur. You are dynamic, industrious, and resilient. You will grow and exit businesses, buy and sell properties. But only you remain the constant factor. With TAAG Law, you keep the same advisors at the table. Through the ups and downs, we remain focused on your vision, and are committed to our relationship for the long-haul.

Nothing above is legal advice and cannot be relied as such. Whether you are a new or established entrepreneur, contact TAAG Law’s offices for a free consultation to discuss your current challenges and long-term objectives and how we can help you with them: andrej@taag.ca or reception@taag.ca : 613-234-6006.

From the Desk of Andrej Litvinjenko, Managing Director at TAAG Law

Published by TAAG Corporation
© 2024 TAAG Corporation
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