Helping Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs

On Friday, March 20, five Triangle lawyers donated a combined total of 25 hours to help small business owners and entrepreneurs in one-on-one, face-to-face sessions.

The Wake Tech/Wells Fargo Center for Entrepreneurship and the N.C. Legal Entrepreneurs Assistance Program (NCLEAP), a project of the North Carolina Bar Association Foundation, partnered in Ask A Lawyer Day, a program that introduces small business owners and entrepreneurs to the benefit of using lawyers as preventive medicine in their businesses.

According to a recent Legal Needs of Small Business Survey, nearly 60 percent of small businesses (companies with 250 employees or less) have experienced a significant legal event in the past two years. Yet most small business owners did not hire a lawyer.

The two major reasons small business owners do not seek professional legal help are cost and budget concerns and the impression that they can handle it on their own. Pre-urgency legal advice can cost anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to thousands, depending upon the situation.

Whatever the preventive cost, it is often miniscule compared to the cost of hiring a lawyer once a preventable error or problem has occurred.

Twenty-two small business owners from the Triangle area took advantage of this opportunity to ask their most pressing questions of a skilled and caring attorney who also practices law in Triangle area.

Questions included basic business formation, intellectual property, taxes and liability and employment and contract issues.