Most people starting a business know they need “the legal stuff.” Fewer know what that actually includes, what order it goes in, or which pieces can wait. A new business legal checklist fixes that.
This one is built around how launches actually unfold over the first six months — not a list of forms, but the decisions that are expensive to get wrong and cheap to get right early. It’s written for owners in Pennsylvania and New Jersey who are building something real: leaving a corporate job, opening a location, hiring their first people, putting money behind a brand.
Month one: set up the business you’re actually building
Form the right entity. For most new businesses, that’s an LLC. The filing itself is the easy part. The decisions around it — who owns what, who decides what, how money comes out — are where the value is.
If you have partners, get the operating agreement done now. Not after the first disagreement. A good operating agreement answers the questions you’d rather not ask out loud: what happens if one of you stops showing up, wants out, gets divorced, or dies. Every one of those questions is easier to answer when everyone still likes each other.
Map out the next six months. What are you signing, who are you hiring, where are you operating, and what are you naming things? Sequencing matters. Plenty of legal problems come from doing the right things in the wrong order — like printing signage before checking whether the name is available.
Months one and two: protect the name before you spend on it
Search before you commit. A trademark search tells you whether someone else already has rights to your name. It’s far cheaper to change a name before the logo, website, signage, and inventory than after.
File if the name matters. If you’re building a brand people will search for, a federal trademark application gives you the strongest protection available. Applications take time, so filing early helps.
Months two through four: get your customer-facing documents in place
Client or customer agreements. Whatever you sell, there should be a written agreement saying what’s included, when you get paid, and what happens when something goes wrong. Service businesses especially need intake forms, consents, and terms that match how they actually work.
Website terms and privacy policy. If you collect any information online — even an email address — you need a privacy policy that matches what you actually do with it. Copying a competitor’s is a common mistake and can create problems you didn’t have.
Vendor and supplier contracts. Read them before you sign. The first contract you sign with a key vendor often becomes the template for the whole relationship.
Months three through five: bring on help the right way
Decide contractor or employee — correctly. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, calling someone a contractor doesn’t make them one. Classification depends on how the work actually happens, and getting it wrong creates tax and wage exposure that grows every pay period.
Put it in writing. A contractor agreement or offer letter that fits your business — not a downloaded template — sets expectations and protects what they create for you. For salons, studios, and similar businesses, that might be a booth or suite rental agreement instead.
Months four through six: the location
Read the lease before you fall in love with the space. Commercial leases are written by landlords, for landlords. The letter of intent stage is where you have the most leverage. Personal guarantees, build-out obligations, assignment rights, and renewal terms are all negotiable, but only before you sign.
Why owners skip the new business legal checklist
It’s rarely because they don’t know it matters. It’s because, billed hourly, every question feels like a cost. So they skip the call, use a template, and hope.
That’s the problem we built the Launch Program to solve.
How the Launch Program works
The Launch Program is six months of legal help for new businesses, at one monthly price.
- A legal roadmap session to plan your first six months — what you need, in what order.
- Your single-member LLC, formed in Pennsylvania or New Jersey, if you need one.
- A set number of projects chosen from our project menu, based on the tier you pick: multi-member LLC and operating agreement, trademark search and application, client agreements, website terms and privacy policy, vendor or customer contract templates, contractor or employee documents, and lease review with landlord negotiation.
- On-call questions by phone and email for all six months. No watching the clock, no hesitating before you call.
Your projects run on a set schedule, so you know what’s coming and when. At month seven, you can move into our GC subscription for ongoing support or step away with notice. Clients who complete the program also receive a Business Succession Planning Kit — everything we built together, organized in one place, so your family and team can find what they need and keep the business running if something happens to you.
The pattern we see most
A new owner forms an LLC online, signs a lease, orders signage, and starts hiring — then calls a lawyer when something goes wrong. The landlord won’t fix the HVAC. The name turns out to belong to someone else. A “contractor” files for unemployment.
Each of those is fixable. Each one also costs more to fix than it would have cost to prevent — that’s true of almost everything on a new business legal checklist. The owners who avoid them aren’t smarter. They just had someone to call before they signed.
What to do next
Use this new business legal checklist to see where you stand. If you’ve already handled some of it, great — the program is built so you only pick the projects you actually need.
If you’re starting or recently started a business in Pennsylvania or New Jersey and want a lawyer in your corner from day one, let’s talk through your plans and find the right fit.
