Home/Guides/Startup Legal Health Check
Interactive · free · nothing is stored
Startup legal health check
Eighteen questions across six areas. It takes about four minutes and returns a prioritised list of the gaps most worth closing first. The questions, the scoring and the report all run inside your own browser — nothing you enter is sent anywhere or saved.
What this is, and what it is not
This is an educational self-assessment, not legal advice and not an audit. It cannot see your documents, your contracts or your facts. A high score does not mean your documentation is adequate; a low score does not mean you are in breach of anything. Treat the output as a list of questions worth putting to a lawyer — not as an answer.
The six areas, and why each one is on the list
1. Entity and governance
Whether the business exists as a separate legal person at all, and whether its constitutional documents say what the founders think they say. The articles of association matter more than most founders expect: in a private company, restrictions on the transfer of shares are generally enforced when they appear in the articles, and are materially weaker when they sit only in a side agreement.
2. Founders and equity
The single most expensive gap in early-stage documentation is the absence of a founders' agreement with vesting. Nearly every founder dispute that becomes litigation involves someone who left early holding equity that nobody intended them to keep, or a deadlock that no document provides a way out of. More on founders' agreements →
3. Customer and vendor contracts
A standard written contract, payment terms with a consequence attached to late payment, and a dispute-resolution clause that actually works. Most commercial litigation in India is contract litigation, and a disproportionate amount of it is caused by clauses that were copied without being read — particularly arbitration clauses that name no seat or no workable appointment mechanism.
4. Intellectual property
Whether the company — rather than a founder, a contractor or a former agency — owns the name, the mark, the code, the designs and the accounts. Assignment of intellectual property does not happen by default merely because someone was paid; for contractors in particular it needs to be written down. More on trade marks →
5. People and engagement
Whether everyone working in the business has a signed contract, and whether people labelled as consultants are, in substance, employees. The label on the contract is not decisive: control over how and when the work is done, exclusivity, integration into the organisation and the manner of payment all matter. More on classification →
6. Data protection and compliance
What personal data the business holds, on what basis, and what it has promised the people it belongs to. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 applies to businesses of every size, and the first step in every case is knowing what you actually collect. More on the DPDP Act →
Disclaimer
Nothing on this page is legal advice, and using this tool creates no advocate–client relationship. See the full disclaimer and terms of use.