Categories / Legal & Incorporation
Legal & incorporation
A curated collection of the best services for incorporating a company and handling legal documents such as contracts and filings, used by founders and small businesses — 13 tools on Founderkit.
13 tools
Legal and incorporation tools handle the paperwork of being a company: forming entities, registered agent services, compliance reminders, contract templates, trademarks, and the annual filings that keep you in good standing.
The category ranges from formation services that file your LLC or Delaware C-corp in a day, to ongoing compliance tools that track deadlines and maintain your registered agent, to template libraries and AI-assisted document review. A few bundle cap table management and fundraising paperwork for startups going the venture route.
When choosing, separate the one-time from the recurring costs — formation is cheap; the registered agent and annual compliance fees are forever. Check whether the service operates in your state and what happens if you want to switch registered agents later. And be honest about the line: paperwork is a product, judgment is a lawyer.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I need a Delaware C-corp, or is it just startup mythology?
- If you're raising venture capital, effectively yes — investors' funds require it for legal and tax reasons, so 'Delaware C-corp' is the path of least resistance. If you're bootstrapping, a plain LLC or your local equivalent is usually simpler and cheaper. Incorporate for the company you're actually building.
- Can online incorporation services replace a lawyer?
- For standard formation paperwork, yes — filing an LLC or C-corp is a commodity process these services handle cheaply and correctly. Where they can't help is judgment: equity splits between founders, unusual vesting, IP assignment edge cases, and anything contentious. The filing is easy; the decisions above it aren't.
- What actually comes after incorporating?
- The ongoing obligations nobody mentions: annual reports, franchise taxes, a registered agent in your state, and keeping corporate records clean. Miss those and the liability protection you're paying for erodes. Most formation services bundle registered agent and compliance reminders — that's the part worth paying for.
- Do I need contracts reviewed for everything?
- No — for standard NDAs and common agreements, reputable templates are fine for early-stage companies. Spend lawyer money where it's asymmetric: founder agreements, IP assignment, your actual terms of service, fundraising docs, and anything where being wrong costs the company.
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