Internet Transactional Lawyers
An experienced Internet business transactional attorney is the closest thing you’ll find to a colleague. These are the deal makers who try to make sure their clients don’t get involved with lawsuits in the first place.
This type of attorney focuses on making sure you have the right legal documents in place – from your website legal documents to your e-commerce contracts. The attorney will encourage you to have the right type of legal entity in place to protect your personal assets while running your business online. If you’re looking to make a private purchase or sale of an e-commerce company, an Internet transactional lawyer can put the right paperwork in place to make the deal go as smoothly as possible while protecting your interests.
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You’ll often find these attorneys not only understand what you do online but they also own their own Internet companies in addition to representing clients. In other words, they’re online entrepreneurs who also know Internet business law.
When you’re looking for a Web transactional attorney, be sure that you check out if there’s a basic understanding about how e-commerce works and related e-commerce laws and regulations.
If a lawyer doesn’t know about U.S. Federal Trade Commission guidelines that affect the Internet and lacks a basic understanding of spam laws, Internet sales taxes, online privacy, etc., you should keep hunting until you find someone who is qualified to represent your business interests online.
You will also want a legal professional who has the wisdom and connections to refer you to a good trial lawyer in case you have a dispute that results in a civil lawsuit.
It’s a warning sign if an attorney who doesn’t litigate pretends he can handle lawsuits simply to keep you as a client. The same is true when a trial attorney pretends to be a transactional attorney. They are very different skill sets.
Intellectual Property Attorneys
Intellectual property (IP) lawyers focus on copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade secrets, and sometimes patents too. They handle these intellectual property rights for offline and online businesses.
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However, their practices aren’t exclusively focused on Internet law. In fact, IP lawyers often don’t know a lot about online businesses except for issues related to intellectual property.
There is a blurring of the lines with this category though.
For example, there are Internet litigators who focus on lawsuits involving intellectual property (e.g. trademark infringement). There are also Internet business transactional lawyers who can handle your copyright and trademark registrations…