January 7, 2025 | 6 Is your liability waiver actually effective? 3 Myths and What to Do Instead When I served as Executive Director of a nonprofit, I found a stack of signed liability waivers, dutifully kept on file to protect the organization. I read the waiver and realized that in the 5 years the organization had been using that waiver, no one had read it. How I knew? The waiver had a different organization's name all over it! Liability waivers are not one-size-fits-all. There are many...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
December 3, 2025 | 5 Why do so many businesses incorporate in Delaware? Delaware has more registered businesses than any other state at more than 2 million. For context, New Mexico has about 15,000. Almost 68% of Fortune 500 companies are organized in Delaware. Why this happens Delaware has an entire court specifically dedicated to business law. It's called the Court of Chancery and it has been deciding business disputes and tweaking the state's business law for over 230 years. This makes the...
3 months ago • 1 min read
November 4, 2025 | 4 We're all wrong about real estate agents in New Mexico Your real estate broker has a legal duty to act in your best interest, right? Wrong. Agents in any industry have a fiduciary duty toward their clients— that is, a legal duty to act in the client's best interest even when the client's interest conflicts with the agent's. But what seems to be a well-kept secret hidden in plain sight is that real estate brokers in NM are almost never agents. If they aren't agents, what...
4 months ago • 2 min read
October 1, 2025 | 3 How to Ethically and Legally Deal With Noncompetes in NM The feds almost banned noncompetes. What happened? In 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) finalized a rule to completely ban noncompete agreements. As always, someone sued and a Texas judge stopped the new rule in its tracks. Under the Trump administration, the FTC abandoned its appeal in the case and let the rule die. But even Trump's FTC recognizes that noncompetes can be abused and the agency is still...
5 months ago • 1 min read
September 3, 2025 | 2 Is your home address on public display? Every registered business needs to designate a Registered Agent (RA) with a physical address that can receive mail (a tall order for us rural folk). The RA will receive important business mail and will usually be the one who gets served with a lawsuit if your company is being sued. The business owner often puts themselves as the RA, which is totally fine, except... Many people put their home address as their Registered Agent...
6 months ago • 1 min read
August 6, 2025 | 1 Welcome to the Honest Contracts Newsletter What legal business topics do you want to know about? Anonymously submit general legal questions on our site and they may be answered in a future newsletter or even featured in the Learning Library. Ask a Question People don't read contracts (and I can't blame them) In a survey of over 1,000 consumers and 274 small business owners in the U.S., 70% of consumers and 62% of business owners admitted to signing contracts without reading...
7 months ago • 1 min read