Launch Legally
The legal foundation your company should have been built on, put in place in 60 days.
For Nigerian founders who have built something real and know the next opportunity will ask for proof they cannot currently produce.
The pain usually arrives as good news.
An accelerator says yes. An investor asks for the data room. A partner wants to see the paperwork before signing.
And the first feeling is not celebration. It is dread — because somewhere underneath the product that works and the traction that is real, there is a set of things nobody ever got round to.
The company registered by an agent who did not know the sector’s share capital requirement. The co-founder agreement that was always going to get written down eventually. The developer who built the product and never assigned the code to the company. The name on every piece of marketing you have ever run, still unregistered. The person who joined early, left quietly, and technically still owns a slice.
None of it broke anything. That is why it never got fixed.
What is actually wrong
It is not the documents. It is what is underneath them.
Founders come to us asking for a contract, a trademark, a registration. Nearly always, the thing they asked for is the smallest part of what is wrong.
Structure
Share splits assigned without regard to contribution. No vesting, so nobody is locked in — which investors read as a signal in itself. Template articles that do not match what you are building or who you intend to bring on. No plan for adding a founder later, and no terms for what happens when someone leaves well or badly.
Ownership of what you made
Trademarks are the part founders know about. The parts they miss: the design of the product, the copyright in the code, and whether the developer who wrote it ever transferred it to the company at all.
Contracts
Increasingly these exist — generated quickly, full of clauses the founder cannot assess. Having a document and having protection are not the same thing, and a contract is the first thing anyone asks for when a relationship breaks.
How the engagement runs
Launch Legally runs over 60 days in sequence, because the phases depend on each other. Ownership cannot be assigned to a company that is not properly constituted. Contracts cannot reference intellectual property the company does not yet hold.
Phase one — Company structure
Getting the company itself right. Incorporation or correction of what already exists, share structure that reflects actual contribution, founder and shareholder agreements, vesting and leaver terms, employee share options where you intend to give the team equity, and the tax and regulatory registrations your sector requires. Where your investors require a foreign holding company, this is where the Delaware parent and Nigerian subsidiary are established.
Phase two — Intellectual property
Securing what the business actually owns. Trademark searches and filings on the names and marks you are trading under. Copyright and design registration where they apply. And the transfer agreements that move ownership of code, designs and creative work from the people who made them into the company — which is the step most founders discover they skipped.
Phase three — Contracts and policies
The agreements the business runs on daily. Client and supplier contracts, employment and contractor agreements, non-disclosure agreements, terms of service, privacy and data policies. Drafted around how your business actually operates rather than adapted from someone else’s.
The Legal Readiness File
At the end of the engagement you receive one file.
Incorporation documents. Tax registrations. Sector licences and permits. Intellectual property acceptance letters and certificates. Assignment agreements. Contracts. Policies.
Held together, organised, and complete.
The point is not tidiness. The point is that when an investor, an acquirer, a regulator or a partner asks what you have, you send a link — rather than spending a fortnight assembling something and discovering what is missing while they wait.
Most firms sell legal tasks one at a time. This is one organised foundation, built in the right order.
What working with us looks like
You can see it being built
You get a private client portal for the engagement. Work appears as it is completed, you can raise questions in-channel rather than waiting for a scheduled call, and we hold structured consultations across the 60 days.
Every document is reviewed three times
Drafted by the responsible associate, reviewed by the senior lawyer for that area, and given final review by Principal Counsel before it reaches you.
It is explained in language you can act on
You should understand every document you are given and what it obliges you to do. If you do not, it is not finished.
Who it is for
This is built for you if
- You have a product with real traction, and a legal foundation that has not kept pace with it
- You are raising, preparing to raise, or in conversation with an accelerator or partner
- Ownership between you and your co-founders was agreed in conversation and never written down
- You are trading under a name you have never registered
- Somebody built your product and you are not certain the company owns it
- You want this handled properly once, rather than one document at a time
It is probably not for you if
- You only need a single document — a contract review or one trademark filing. We do that work; you do not need a 60-day engagement for it. Look at [standalone services] instead.
- You have not started building yet. Come back when there is something to protect.
- You want the cheapest available option. We are not it, and we would rather tell you now.
Already partway there
If you have already done some of this
Some founders arrive having already handled part of the foundation — the company is properly registered, or the trademark is filed, or the contracts are sound.
In that case a full 60-day engagement is not the right answer, and we will say so on the call. We will scope something narrower around what is genuinely missing.
It starts with a conversation, not a proposal
The Legal Gap Assessment call is where we look at what you have built, what exists on paper, and what does not. You will leave the call knowing what is missing and what order it should be addressed in — whether or not you go on to work with us.
We will tell you on the call whether Launch Legally is right for you. Sometimes it is not, and saying so is more useful to you than selling it.
Free. 45 minutes. Bring whatever documents you already have.
FAQ
How long does it really take?
Sixty days from kickoff, assuming documents and decisions come back from you within the timeframes we agree at the start. Regulatory filings — CAC, trademarks, sector licences — run on the relevant registry’s timetable, which we do not control. We tell you at the outset which items depend on a third party.
What do you need from me?
Time and honesty, mainly. Details of your business and how it operates, identification and documents for the filings, and decisions on the questions we put to you — particularly on ownership, which only the founders can answer.
My company is already registered. Does that change anything?
Often it means there is correction work rather than fresh incorporation. Registration done without a share structure strategy is one of the most common things we unwind — and unwinding it is easier now than after an investor has looked at it.
I am based outside Nigeria. Can you still act for me?
Yes. A meaningful share of our clients are Nigerians building here from abroad. The engagement runs remotely, and the client portal exists partly for that reason.
What happens at the end?
You receive the Legal Readiness File and an offboarding session. Most clients move onto a retainer at that point so the foundation stays current as the business changes — but that is a separate decision, made at the end, not a condition of this.
Do you guarantee I will raise?
No, and be wary of anyone who does. What we can tell you is that legal due diligence stops being the thing that holds up your raise.