Entrepreneurs who want to start a business may want to consider consulting an attorney to help with proper business formation and legal contracts to avoid costly legal issues down the road. That’s according to Lisa Cagle, an attorney with the law firm of Gunderson, Palmer, Nelson and Ashmore, LLP in Rapid City, South Dakota. Cagle focuses her practice primarily on business and estate planning, employment law and real estate law.

“Getting things set up right from the beginning is going to cost a little bit up front, but can save you tens of thousands of dollars on the back end if we're trying to fix it,” she said. “We'll see businesses come in and they've been running along just great, and they run into a problem that we could have easily fixed or prevented with a contract in the beginning, and now we're having to have the court involved, and that's so much more expensive.”

Consulting an attorney to review an organization’s employee handbook and policies can be beneficial for the business. They can check for inconsistencies in policies and make sure anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies are written correctly to ensure protection of not only the business but also the employee.

Employee classification is another area that can get a business into trouble if it’s determined a worker is misclassified, such as a salaried employee who should actually be classified as hourly.

“You want to make sure that your 1099 workers are actually 1099 workers. They shouldn't be W-2...

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