Hiring a new employee is an exciting time for any business. But it can also be a legal minefield, especially when you don’t have a dedicated HR professional or department. Once you find your next great hire, should you send them an offer letter or an employment agreement? What’s the difference between the two? And what legal risks should you be aware of, regardless of whether you decide to send an offer letter or an employment agreement?

To recap, in Part 1 of this series, we discussed the importance of conducting a trademark search, and in Part 2, we explained this idea of the “likelihood of confusion” and what to look for in that trademark search. Assuming your trademarks aren’t confusingly similar with that of another company offering related goods or services, how do you go about actually registering your trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)?

Raising money is a critical concern for most start-ups and small businesses. Whether it's seed funding to get the business started or raising capital to take the business to the next level, every business needs money (and probably more of it). But it's not as simple as offering potential investors an opportunity and then letting the money pour in. Anytime a business seeks to raise money by promising a return of some sort on the investment, then securities laws apply. This includes offering an ownership interest in the business (whether that's stock in a corporation or a membership interest in an LLC) and even debt obligations like promissory notes. In this series, we'll break down these securities laws and how they apply to small businesses.