At Birkett Long we provide proactive advice designed to help you in setting up a new business as a sole trader or to deal with ongoing issues connected with your trade.

Main Services

• Comparison with different forms of trading entity
• Terms and Conditions of Business
  • Consumer
  • Business to Business
• Regulatory advice
  • Whether your business needs to comply with any particular regulations
  • Distance Selling Regulations
  • Dealing with consumers
  • Data Protection Act requirements 
  • Employment Businesses and Agencies
• Protecting intellectual property rights 
• E-Business and E-commerce 
• Full range of commercial contracts
• All related commercial issues
• Debt collection
• Franchises

Expertise

A key ingredient of any business is a suitable set of terms and conditions, which will set out your key terms of business and seek to limit your liability. If you deal with consumers, in order to avoid fines that can be levied, your terms will need to take account of regulations that deal with unfair contract terms – we can help you to get this right and understand your obligations while ensuring that you are not left disadvantaged by a failure to implement such regulations. For example, under the Distance Selling Regulations if you don’t provide certain information to a consumer in writing before the contract is entered in to the consumer’s cancellation rights will be extended. By following the regulations you can limit the time that a consumer has to cancel a contract to that provided in the regulations.

In business any dealings with others that result in a contractual relationship should be recorded in writing, experience shows that a properly recorded contract will save you significant cost and acrimony in the long run. Contracts do not have to be long and complicated but they do need to accurately record the terms agreed and be executed (signed and dated) in the appropriate way so as to be enforceable.

Often when setting up in business, people will want to understand the different types of trading entities available and our team will be able to help you identify the one most suited to you and your business needs.

We have a great deal of readily available guidance information for new businesses and Sole Traders. Our main concern is to ensure you are aware of key regulatory provisions and to assist you to understand and limit your liability arising from the operation of your business.