The practice of entrepreneurial law generally refers to the legal work needed to advise start-ups, small businesses, and nonprofits. It can involve, but is not limited to, transactional work like choice of entity and entity formation, contract review and drafting, corporate governance issues, review of leases, researching legal issues as appropriate, and trademark searches and filing. It may also involve consulting with a number of government resources, often specific to a particular state. This guide focuses on general legal resources for those interested in entrepreneurial law, with an additional section on North Carolina resources.
Much of the work done in the area of entrepreneurial law involves traditional legal research into cases, statutes, and regulations. It also includes consulting different types of secondary sources, especially practitioners' materials, both in legal databases like Westlaw, Lexis, and Bloomberg, but also in print.
The resources in this guide are designed to familiarize you with basic resources in the area of entrepreneurial law, particularly for start-ups and nonprofit entities. This area of law is often subject to change, so please make sure to update all of your research when consulting this guide.
The UNC Law Library has a separate, detailed research guide on Intellectual Property Law which may also prove useful for those researching entrepreneurial law.
This guide highlights the best and most-frequently used resources on entrepreneurial law available to researchers at UNC Law. It does not provide an exhaustive view of UNC Libraries' materials that may be helpful to researching entrepreneurial law. For additional resources, consult:
UNC catalog subject search:
Recommended UNC general databases:
