Community Empowerment Matters

  The Problem: Managing Liability Across Different Ventures   Many business owners manage multiple ventures. This often entails dealing with different types of risks and liabilities. Whether selling different lines of products or operating multiple services within a business, it is really important to keep liabilities isolated to protect assets. For example, consider a business owner who owns both a restaurant and a catering business. In the event that a customer sued the restaurant for something like a slip-and-fall accident, the owner’s catering business could also be at risk if the ventures are not legally separated. Without proper legal structures, a lawsuit or financial issue affecting one part of the business could easily spill over, putting the entire business at risk. For this reason, business owners should look for ways to separate liability across their ventures and ensure that issues in one area don't threaten the stability and success of the others.   Liab...

              Given the variety of legal structures, it is essential to pick the one that is best for your business and the goals you’ve laid out for them. And, in this age of conscious consumerism, businesses have looked towards merging both societal benefit and profit. [1] With that in mind, businesses are looking towards the sort of entity forms that provide a structure to achieve this dual-pronged purpose. One such entity in particular that has gathered attention is the relatively new statutory business entity the Low-Profit Limited Liability Company (L3C) . [2] An L3C is considered an entity for entrepreneurs who “value purpose and profits,” and is intended to provide entrepreneurs with the opportunity to form an entity that caters to both these goals. [3] The L3C is the states’ response to the demand of a growing number of social entrepreneurs that seek to combine the financial benefits of a traditional for-profit entity with the social benefi...