Chapter 8
Legal Issues and Solutions for Coaches
Objectives
This chapter introduces the legal issues that affect your coaching practice. A comprehensive “Law of Coaching” could be a multivolume work, so please think of this chapter as an introduction to the breadth and variety of legal issues you face in starting and operating your coaching practice. These issues include, but are certainly not limited to:
- The choice of structure for your business entity and relevant tax considerations
- Naming your business legally and ethically
- Contracting with your clients legally and ethically
- Regulatory issues that affect coaching (and boundary issues with related fields such as psychotherapy, career counseling, marriage and family therapy, etc.)
- Intellectual property issues, such as copyright and trademark laws
- Insurance requirements for your coaching practice
- Emerging legal issues in the field of coaching
Pre-Chapter Self-Assessment Test
1. Under current U.S. copyright law, copyright attaches the moment an original work is created; a notice of copyright is helpful but not mandatory to protect one’s creative work.
a. True
b. False
2. A coach can almost always insulate herself from being sued for negligence by a well-crafted engagement letter.
a. True
b. False
3. It is fully legal to reproduce a New Yorker cartoon or a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon in a presentation as long as I identify and attribute the cartoon to its source.
a. True
b. False
4. Because ...
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