I Can’t Believe Lawyers Charges $500 To Do This

Last week I formed a new corporation. At first I was going to get a lawyer to do this for me but then I asked myself, how hard can this be to do it yourself? The standard legal fee for creating a new company is $500 plus all the filing charges, which can run another $500.

Forming a new company use to require a lot of paper filing but since then the BC government had made things a lot easier with One Stop. This is the website that gives you instant one stop access to many public agencies. You can find out information about starting a new business and incorporate your new company right at the site.

Before you can do that however you need to reserve your company name. You do that at any of the One Stop kiosks located though out the province. It just so happens, the kiosk in Richmond is located at the Richmond Chamber of Commerce, which is only five blocks away from me. Reserving a company name cost $35, but with Chamber service fee and taxes it came to almost $50. You give them a selection of three names. If the first one doesn’t work out they will try the others. Normally the process takes 3 working days. You can pay $100 more for next day service. It was a good thing I didn’t because they had an answer to me in 20 minutes! I guess not many people are starting new companies in BC these days. My first name choice was approved.

After your name is approved and you’re given the name reservation number, you can then go ahead and incorporate the new company online at the One Stop site. The BC incorporation fee is $350, so all together it cost me $400 to set up this new corporation. Total work time to do all this was about 15 minutes (not counting wait time for the name reservation). Had I gone to a lawyer to do this for me, he would have charged me $500, for 15 minutes work!

I think I’m in the wrong business…. On second thought, no I’m not. 🙂