Common pitfalls starting a professional services partnership?
June 26, 2013 1:11 PM   Subscribe

Friend is likely to start up a partnership (specifically a Limited Liability Partnership) in the UK. Aside from the usual problems of running a business in the current economic climate what particular issues are they likely to face? I'm interested more in the softer 'issues' like the difficulties of coming to decisions between the partners if they all have an equal stake, or how to put in place good procedures for equity partners to join or leave rather than more 'harder' legal aspects of say how to incorporate at Companies House.

Softer issues that I had thought of:

-Coming to decisions between partners
-Allocating roles between partners (who buys the printer ink?)
-Dealing with reimbursement of business related expenses
-Ensuring people are looking at the long term future of the practice

Any more or related experiences gratefully received!

The practice will be for professional consultant services (lawyer type).

Thanks!
posted by Albondiga to Work & Money (1 answer total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
1) The partnership agreement should state what will happen in terms of a dispute

Some partners elect one partner as the chairman at their meetings and s/he has the casting vote

Or they may hire in a non-executive to come to partner meetings and mediate

2) A lot of this depends on how big the firm is and how much printing they do - you can often lease office printers with sensors that auto-order new cartridges when the old ones run out! but they are more expensive than a cheap printer from pc world!

3) There should be a policy about what can be reimbursed and what cannot and expenses should be authorised before being paid out (normally by one or two other partners but again this depends on the size of the firm)

Expenses are often paid out at the same time as drawings

4) Long term - not sure about this one but dependent on the firm size they may have a partner meeting every few months offsite just to discuss strategy and long term plans
posted by Metaphysics at 1:08 PM on June 28, 2013


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