Annoying masculine legal-ese

I’ve been waiting for the new Australian financial year to begin on 1 July before I incorporate the business. I did this to avoid time-consuming tax paperwork when I haven’t sold anything yet. So, with July now only two days away, today I worked on the company’s constitution (the company rules).

The easier way of doing this would have been to pay for an online package like with Legal Zoom or Clear Docs. I’ve had a company before, and I used a similar service then. However, because this is a social enterprise, I needed to add some additional clauses which aren’t standard, but lawyers are obviously expensive.

Since I already had a Constitution from the previous company, I decided to use that as a template. What I didn’t realise was how annoyingly masculine that document was. So, of course I had to change it. Example below:

I cringed every time I read the word, “he.” I ended up using the more neutral, “they” as a wrote the new constitution, but I was seriously tempted to use “she” just to watch a new male director cringe the way that I did. In fact, I may still do that just for fun! 😉

Social Traders certification process

Spoke to Social Traders to make sure my social enterprise met their criteria for certification later. They said yes – just need to get 2 clauses into my corporate constitution.

Setting up my corporate structure

Looked at options to turn my sole trader business into a corporation which I need to get investors, as well as liability protection. I would have done this already, but decided to wait until the new financial year to save time on tax paperwork. Cleardocs and Legal Zoom are two easy options for under $1000 which includes the ASIC and ATO fees. I need to go back and look at how I did this before with my previous business. I don’t think it was that complicated. I also need to file for trademarks about the same time – more expenses.