When a client sets up or runs a business, the most important question is often the simplest: if things go wrong, who pays? The answer depends on whether the business is a legal person in its own right and whether the people behind it are shielded from its debts. As a solicitor, you will advise on this constantly — choosing the right structure, warning founders about personal exposure, and working out whether a parent company, a director, or a promoter can be pursued directly.
This lesson builds that understanding from the ground up, then shows you where the protection ends.
- Separate Legal Personality — how a company exists in law as a person distinct from those who own and run it, and what that separation means.
- Types of Business Entity and Member Liability — which structures have their own legal identity, and exactly how far each member's liability extends.
- Pre-Incorporation Contracts — who is bound when someone contracts for a company that does not yet exist.
- Corporate Groups and Piercing the Veil — when parent and subsidiary stay separate, and the narrow cases where courts look behind a company.
- Personal Liability of Directors — the routes through which directors lose their protection and become personally liable.
- Corporate Criminal Liability — how a company commits crimes, and the sanctions a court can impose on it.