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Are you a small business owner?  Are you involved in a business dispute?  Are you trying to draft a contract by yourself?  Are you financially distressed and not sure where to turn next?  I am New York Business Attorney James J. DeCristofaro, and I operate under the trade name “The Lawyer James.”  Right now small business owners are benefiting in three ways.

First, they are reaping the benefits of the FREE information I have developed with the small business owner in mind, and this FREE information directly and particularly benefits the small business owner.  What is it?  So far I have eight ebooks available for download for free on my website: https://thelawyerjames.com/get-a-free-book/.  These ebooks cover turning your business around after lockdown and generally, what to do during the lockdown, how to address business disputes, how to dominate your adversary, and how to draft contracts and other types of agreements, with new content being rolled out regularly.  Want information on a topic I have not written about yet?  Just go to my website, fill out the contact form https://thelawyerjames.com/get-started/, and let me know, and I will call you to talk about it.

Second, small businesses are taking advantage of my $1 legal and business checkup.  That’s right, it’s only $1, and that $1 gets donated to https://www.citymeals.org/, a local New York City charity that feeds the elderly.  During your $1 legal and business checkup, we work with you and take up to an hour to go over these areas of your business, and does a 15 point assessment of your business, which covers:  (1) business structure and business registration; (2) contracts and agreements; (3) staffing, relationships, your recruiting process, your hiring process, your employee evaluation process, your firing process, your current employee handbook and policy manual, your employee rights posting compliance, and wage and overtime compliance; (4) intellectual property, like trademarks and copyrights, licenses; (5) website’s terms of use, privacy policy, terms of sale, return policy; (6) your relationship with your landlord; (7) your relationship with your vendors; (8) your relationship with your buyers; (9) your relationship with your strategic partners; (10); debt (amount, relationships with creditors; trade, credit card, bank loan, factoring, merchant advance); (11) system to cover deadlines, renewal dates, expiration dates; (12) accounts receivable and collections; (13) insurance; (14) business disputes and litigation; and (15) answer questions you might have.

Third, small business owners are taking care of their legal needs by signing up for my monthly membership subscription plan — there are three plans, and the one that is right for you depends on your specific needs, in terms of pricing they range from $397 monthly to $1,797 monthly, and they are called the Single Dynamite Plan, the Double Dynamite Plan, and the Triple Dynamite Plan, and each includes very specific levels of service, ranging from phone calls with an attorney, access to document form libraries, live, on the phone, attorney assistance with business and trademark filings, live attorney drafting and review of agreements, and so on.  There are also monthly subscription plans for those clients who are involved in business litigation in any of the New York courts, and best of all, the plans are supervised by me, New York business attorney James J. DeCristofaro.

It is very important for you to have a relationship with a competent attorney.  After all, according to Entrepreneur magazine:  “Hiring a good lawyer is crucial to any successful business.”  https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/58326.  Why do you think that Entrepreneur magazine says that?  There are several reasons, and I have identified 15 of those reasons above, and we go over those 15 reasons, which are translated into the 15 point $1 legal and business checkup, the 15 point business and legal assessment, that we take up to an hour to go over with you. Just to repeat, because repetition is important, the $1 legal and business checkup is performed by a New York business attorney.

Let me explain a story as to why you need a New York business attorney if you are a New York small business, and not just only non-attorney professionals on your team (who are also vital for your business — and without question you should be working with a good accountant, and other professionals relevant for your small business too).  Know this:  unless an accountant is also an attorney, your accountant cannot give you legal advice.  One of my clients received an opinion from its accountant, the advice was legal advice, and it wound up costing my client about $2 million in immediate attorneys fees and lost revenues combined.  And it could have been addressed in a 15 minute phone call; let me repeat and say it another way:  the 15 minute phone call with a good New York business attorney could have saved this client about $2 million.  

What can also happen, as it did in this case, is that regulatory agencies can become involved, and open up an investigation into a small business’s practices, which can range anywhere from accounting, taxation, disclosure, reporting, just to name a few.  The conduct could be unintentional and ignorant, but failure to comply could be very costly, as it was here.  This is also another reason to apply for one of my monthly subscription programs — to have regular contact with your attorney, and just to check in about what your current business is like and to see if you would need any course correction, or confirmation that you are doing just fine.

If that’s not compelling enough to have a good attorney on your team, then I am not sure how you would otherwise be convinced, unless you have some terrible experience that teaches you, but that would be a waste of time and be costly, and may even destroy your business.  And this raises another point:  why would you want to learn the hard way, through bad experiences, rather than the smart way, which is with the advice of an experienced New York business attorney, at least when it comes to matters of New York legal advice.