Law Firm Offers Free Legal Services To Start-Ups - Venture Capital ...

By Deborah Gage

Entrepreneurs who want to start a company but don?t know how can take advantage of free services offered by Perkins Coie, a law firm that is celebrating its 100^th anniversary with a new website at www.startupPerColator.com.

Here they can get forms that show how to create a Delaware ?C? corporation. They can also generate a term sheet, based on model documents from the National Venture Capital Association, that could guide them as they negotiate seed funding from an investor.

The website is also being updated by Perkins Coie attorneys, who are providing Founder Tips of the Week on subjects ranging from business plans to protection of trade secrets to financing.?

Buddy Arnheim, who chairs Perkins Coie?s Emerging Companies practice, said the site is ?a way to arm entrepreneurs with ability and knowledge so they can form companies more quickly? at a lower cost. He said he got the idea for the site while using Intuit?s TurboTax to do his taxes.

?I loved how it walked me through a wizard and spit out a tax return, and I thought, why can?t we do that for the formation of companies?? he said.

Perkins Coie still advises entrepreneurs to consult a lawyer when they?re starting their companies, but if they?ve used the wizards first, Arnheim figures their conversations with attorneys could be more productive, honing in on the 10% or 20% of the issues that are different for each start-up.

He says the cost of starting an Internet business has fallen precipitously over the last decade, and the legal industry is facing the same pressures. ?Hopefully this will be the beginning of embracing technology to improve the quality of (legal) services,? Arnheim said.

Perkins Coie expects to add more services to the site?perhaps on making small acquisitions or raising venture capital or debt?in the future. The firm has offices throughout the U.S. and in China and Taiwan.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2012/03/16/law-firm-offers-free-legal-services-to-start-ups/

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