Guides, Reviews & Commentary

A collection of 103 posts

Startup Central

Founder Agreement Template: Equity Splits, Vesting, and IP Assignment Explained

A founder agreement locks in equity splits, vesting schedules, IP assignment, roles, and what happens if someone leaves. This guide explains each critical clause, common negotiation points, and the legal protections that prevent co-founder disputes from derailing your company.

Digital Presence & Online Policies

How to Set Up a Subdomain for Your Law Firm Using Cloudflare and DigitalOcean

If you're a solo or small-firm lawyer who ended up owning the company website, a subdomain can cleanly separate a client portal, intake workflow, or knowledge base from your main site. A step-by-step walkthrough using Cloudflare and DigitalOcean.

Startup Central

Why Clean, Digital Cap Table Management Matters More Than You Think

A clean, digital cap table is the difference between a smooth fundraise and a diligence nightmare. This guide explains why messy equity records delay deals, trigger disputes, and erode trust, with a practical framework for maintaining defensible records from formation to exit.

Startup Central

Catering Contracts for Events: A Legal Guide for Startups

Catering contracts for product launches, investor events, and team gatherings carry real legal risk around food safety, liability, and cancellation terms. This guide covers key clauses, insurance requirements, and red flags to review before signing.

Business Formation & Corporate Governance

Cap Table Management: A Startup Founder's Complete Guide

Equity is a startup's core currency, and the cap table is its ledger. This guide covers initial setup, ongoing maintenance, SAFE and convertible note modeling, common mistakes that stall deals, and when counsel and cap table software must be part of the process.

Guides, Reviews & Commentary

Decide If n8n Belongs in Your Automation Stack

n8n is a node-based workflow automation tool that connects the apps you already use—email, CRMs, document storage, AI services—into repeatable pipelines. This evaluation covers whether it fits your firm's technical capacity and workflow needs.

Startup Central

EBITDA vs SDE: How the Metric You Choose Can Change Your Sale Price

Choosing EBITDA or SDE as your valuation metric can change a sale price by hundreds of thousands of dollars. This guide covers definitions, step-by-step calculations, worked examples, and how to lock the right metric into your LOI to avoid disputes.

Lawyer in the Loop

Why AI Literacy Now Matters for Law Firms and Legal Teams

In large enterprises, AI literacy is moving from specialist teams to the whole organization. Small and mid-size firms can't copy that playbook directly, but the underlying shift matters: your team needs to understand AI well enough to use it safely and effectively.

Startup Central

Startup Accounting Agreements: A Legal and Financial Guide

Your accounting service agreement governs who handles your books, what they deliver, and what happens when things change. This guide covers scope definition, fee structures, data ownership, confidentiality, liability, and transition terms that protect your next fundraise.

Legal Tech & Automation

Why Legal Teams Are Looking at Open-Source Platforms Like Mattermost

Legal teams are increasingly boxed in by cloud-only chat tools: rising per-user pricing, limited visibility into where data actually lives, and retention settings that don't map to professional obligations. Self-hosted platforms like Mattermost address those gaps.

Legal Tech & Automation

Law Firm Workflow Playbook: Automate Intake, Drafting, and Billing

Small firms hit a ceiling when growth depends on manual work. This playbook covers how to map core workflows, automate intake and conflict checks, standardize drafting with templates and AI, and fix billing with automated reminders and lawyer approval gates.

Legal Tech & Automation

Law Firm Workflow Automation: Intake, Drafting, and Billing

Workflow automation helps small firms reduce manual intake, inconsistent drafting, and late billing without replacing legal judgment. This guide covers process mapping, lightweight tool selection, and implementing automations with built-in lawyer approval gates.

Digital Presence & Online Policies

Subdomains for Law Firms: Building Client Portals, AI Tools, and Internal Systems

A subdomain is a section of your firm's domain—like portal.yourfirm.com—that points to a separate application. This guide covers architecture patterns for hosting client portals, AI-powered tools, and internal systems while maintaining security and control.

Legal Tech & Automation

Why LLMs matter for legal work when designed around outcomes

Many early AI pilots in legal stall for predictable reasons: models hallucinate, outputs sound confident but miss the point, or adoption collapses after the demo. The difference is outcome-driven design—building LLM integration around measurable legal results.

Startup Central

When and How to Build an Effective Startup Advisory Board

An advisory board works when it solves a specific constraint, not when it fills a vanity list. This guide covers when to add advisors, typical equity ranges, agreement structure with vesting and IP terms, and governance practices for productive relationships.

Guides, Reviews & Commentary

Understanding Label Advances and Recoupment: What Recording Artists Actually Owe

Most artists misunderstand how label advances work. Advances are pre-payments against future royalties, not personal loans. This guide covers recoupment mechanics, cross-collateralization traps, royalty calculations, and the contract clauses that control back-end pay.

Startup Central

4-Year Vesting with a 1-Year Cliff: A Practical Guide for Startup Founders and Early Employees

Four-year vesting with a one-year cliff is the standard equity structure for founders, employees, and advisors. This guide explains how schedules work, what triggers acceleration, and how to negotiate cliff length and exercise windows.

Legal Tech & Automation

AI Workflows in Legal Practice: A Practical Transformation Guide

Legal work is shifting from manual, email-driven practice to workflow-driven, AI-assisted operations. This transformation guide covers intake, extraction, triage, and review—with a framework for moving from scattered tools to connected workflows.

Startup Central

Know What a “Healthy” Cap Table Actually Looks Like

Investors evaluate cap-table health before writing checks. A healthy table shows balanced founder ownership, a properly sized option pool, and clean records. This guide defines what good looks like at each stage and flags common red flags.

Guides, Reviews & Commentary

What Are Presumed Damages? Meaning, Examples, and How to Respond

Presumed damages allow courts to award compensation without requiring proof of exact financial losses. They arise in defamation, privacy violations, and statutory claims. This guide explains when they apply and what startups should know about litigation exposure.

Intellectual Property & Branding

Intellectual Property Violations Explained: How to Identify, Respond, and Enforce Your IP

IP violations range from trademark infringement to trade-secret misappropriation and copyright claims. Each carries different enforcement mechanisms and damages. This guide explains the major categories and the legal steps startups should take to protect their IP.

Startup Central

Indemnification Clauses Explained: How Indemnity Works in Contracts (With Examples)

Indemnification clauses determine who pays when something goes wrong under a contract. This guide breaks down how indemnity works, the difference between mutual and one-way terms, common negotiation points, and red flags to catch before signing.

AI Law

Start With a Human-First AI Strategy for Dealmaking

AI tools compress M&A timelines by automating document review and flagging contract risks. But negotiation, relationships, and strategic decisions still need human judgment. This guide presents a framework for integrating AI into your deal process.

Startup Central

Accounting Service Agreements: A Practical Checklist for Startups and Small Businesses

Hiring an accounting firm without a clear service agreement leads to scope disputes, missed deadlines, and unclear liability. This checklist covers essential terms: scope, deliverable timelines, data access, fee structures, liability caps, and termination rights.

Legal Tech & Automation

From AI Tools to AI Workflows: How Law Firms Can Actually Improve Margins

Law firms face acute margin pressure: flat fees, client cost sensitivity, and tight talent pools. Buying point tools won't fix that unless workflows are redesigned. This piece maps how connected workflows across intake, research, and billing drive real returns.