MediaTech Law

By MIRSKY & COMPANY, PLLC

Free Legal Documents!! (Sure, Why Not?)

Posted March 13, 2015 by Andrew Mirsky 0

Why would lawyers give away legal documents for free? Or better yet, why wouldn’t they do it? Daniel Doktori offered some good answers to these questions when he wrote recently in TechCrunch about Big Law’s answer to the Open Data movement.

But what’s most remarkable about the big lawyer giveaway – get there early, get your legal docs, we’re opening this year at 6pm on Thanksgiving Night! – may be how unremarkable it really is.

Doktori writes of law firms’ “mimic[ing] their small clients’ ‘freemium’ business development model”, suggesting that giving away free stuff is simply a way to get clients in the door where they (hopefully) will become paying clients. Perhaps. But it seems unlikely that a cash-strapped startup will hire a $700 per hour firm of attorneys simply because that firm gave away a generic founders’ subscription agreement. And with so many law firms offering the exact same documents – Doktori cites his own firm’s service as well and those of Cooley LLP and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP – there’s not much here to really differentiate the value of these documents in the first place. Not to mention the various non-law firm startups getting into the same game, including Founders’ Workbench (mentioned by Doktori) and low-cost services from Rocket Lawyer and others.

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Startups: Capital Fundraising, Crowdsourcing and Securities Law

Posted June 13, 2011 by Andrew Mirsky 0

“With regulators considering easing fund-raising rules for start-ups …” a recent Wall Street Journal story began, “social-networking sites that link entrepreneurs to large pools of donors are gearing up for a boom.”

First, the background.  Federal and state securities laws govern the sales – including the solicitation of sales – of securities, affecting all efforts to raise capital for startups.  This includes any public efforts to raise money, and includes raising small or large amounts of money.  Generally, sales and solicitations of sales of stock require compliance with SEC and various state securities law, and more particularly the registration requirements of those laws.

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Startup Companies: LLCs vs. S corps, Startup Capital vs. Outside Investors

Posted April 29, 2011 by Andrew Mirsky 0

Startup Structure Question: Why and when are LLCs preferable to S corps and vice versa?

Answer #1: If now or soon contemplating employee stock options and/or bringing in outside investors, then corporation status is probably desirable.  And … you can later convert from S to C.

Answer #2: Otherwise, LLCs are more desirable.

Pass-Through Entities

Both S corps and LLCs are pass-through entities, meaning that income will not be taxable at the company level, but only taxable to the owners.  This distinguishes these 2 entity types from traditional “C” corporations, which must pay taxes both at the company level and later when distributed to the shareholders.

Tax Advantage – S Corps

S corps have one – potential – further tax advantage over LLCs, in the ability to effectively reduce an owner’s self-employment taxes by paying the owner a salary versus dividends.  So, for example, assuming two companies, one an S corp, the other an LLC, both earn $100,000 in income.  The S corp could pay the owner $50,000 in salary, and the $50,000 balance would be deemed dividend income to the owners or owners, and not subject to self-employment taxes.  The salary portion is subject to self-employment taxes, while the dividend portion is not.

Using the same figures for an LLC, the full $100,000 would be deemed income to the owner subject to self-employment tax.

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