Naturally, nobody thinks that they need a lawyer, until they “need” a lawyer, which for most, if not all businesses, this means doing without legal counsel until a legal issue presents itself. While on first glance this may seem reasonable, the fact of the matter is that any business that proceeds without legal counsel is potentially entering an area where their actions are both legally and ethically questionable (Doktori, 2014).
In this case the business is has a plan to “eliminate” the competition. From a legal perspective, eliminating the competition can involve a range of actions; some that are legal, such as producing an entirely better product; and some that are not, such as stealing the source code of a rival’s software. Accordingly, legal counsel is absolutely necessary to provide guidance to company leadership as to what actions they take are legal and which actions may lead to civil or criminal liability.
In addition, any leader of a company needs to think about the ethical duties that they have to their staff, customers, and most importantly their owners/investors as to the step and decisions that the make (Babb, 2009). To be sure, if they make a decision that does not comply with the required standards, such as duty to inform or duty to, within their discretion, make decisions that put the company in the best place or situation possible to be successful, then they risk putting the company in a circumstance that will lead to a harm, loss of market share or decrease in the value of the company.
Accordingly, in moving forward with their plan, the company should hire legal counsel for consultation. Hiring legal counsel not only will provide leadership with the best possible legal basis to procced but will also provide them with a forward thinking idea of the potential legal questions that they may face and the options that are available for them to resolve them.
References
Babb, D. (2009). The Accidental Startup: Business for the chance entrepreneur. New York, NY: Penguin.
Doktori, D. (2014, Jan. 04). Why startups hire their own lawyers. Retrieved from http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/04/why-startups-hire-their-own-lawyers/
