Templates are for lawyers, not founders
You know you need a shareholders’ agreement. It’s a vital document for any early stage company that has more than one shareholder. It helps protect everyone involved by making it clear who has what obligations and what happens when things go wrong.
You’re early stage. You don’t have money to burn on expensive lawyers. So a template seems like a good idea. You’ve probably searched for “shareholders’ agreement free template” and seen countless documents available. You open it. It’s gibberish.
Templates are for lawyers. They’re not written for founders or people without legal experience. They serve a specific purpose: to standardise how things are done when doing them in volume. They’re a starting point - never the end result.
I’m going to assume that you don’t have any legal training. So it would be unreasonable to expect you to be able to fill out a template and have it do what you actually want. In fact, it could have the opposite effect - and kill your business before it gets off the ground.
Real reasons why you shouldn’t rely on a template for your shareholders’ agreement
You don’t know what you don’t know
For the average founder, legal work is difficult and stressful. Without relevant experience, legal training or expert guidance, you’re driving at night in a snowstorm without the headlights on. This is what using a template is.
Although template providers will suggest that it’s a simple as filling in the blanks, it’s not. There is a real danger that, despite your best efforts, you’re going to miss something crucial; or even worse, add things that don’t need to be there which come back to bite you in the future.
A shareholders’ agreement is more than a document
A shareholders’ agreement is actually what it sounds like: an agreement between the shareholders of a company. In order to come to this agreement, the shareholders need to have the difficult discussions up front. For example:
- what happens if a shareholder fails to contribute to the business after 6 months?
- what happens if a shareholder gets divorced and their spouse gets their shares?
- what stops a majority shareholder from diluting minority shareholders into oblivion?
These issues are not addressed by simply filling out a template document. It requires the shareholders to think about them in advance, and agree how to deal with them once they arise.
Curious about what it all actually involves? Read our detailed guide to putting together shareholders’ agreements for a full picture.
A template is only part of the job
There’s an entire process that needs to be followed. Companies must jump through hoops to ensure that the things they do have legal effect. Signatures need to be collected properly. Contracts need to have consideration. Deeds need to be witnessed. The list is endless. The template you download is only part of the puzzle.
A template won’t be tailored to you
Templates are drafted to fit as wide a range of situations as possible. It’s unlikely that a template will contain all of the things that the shareholders need to consider. For example, most UK oriented shareholders’ agreement templates will not contain information about share vesting.
Your business is unique, as is your relationship with your fellow shareholders and so using a generic template will rarely be suitable for your specific needs.
A template might not be legally enforceable
Putting together a shareholders’ agreement involves multiple types of law: contract law, company law, employment law and tax law are always involved. Each type of law has different implications and in order for the agreement to be legally enforceable, each element needs to play nicely with the others.
If things go wrong, you need to be confident that you can rely on it to help you resolve the problem. By using a template, there is a real risk that you may miss something crucial that is required to make the agreement legally enforceable. You may think that you’re covered - until something goes wrong and you find out that you aren’t.
A template of unknown origin is not trustable
When was it written? Who wrote it? Does it apply to UK law in 2026? How can you trust it?
What you should do instead of using a template
Engage a lawyer with experience of drafting shareholders’ agreements for companies like yours
A corporate lawyer who has experience advising founders can guide you through all of these considerations. They should be able to help surface the things that matter most to you, put together all of the documents required to make the agreement legally enforceable, and take care of the entire process from start to finish. The downside is the cost. A thorough exercise, carried out by a competent lawyer, is likely to cost over £1,500. Most importantly, before you instruct any lawyer, you should feel absolutely confident that they’ve dealt with businesses (and shareholders) like you.
A common misunderstanding - and expectation, given how much they charge - is that lawyers will do everything for you. This is wrong. The majority of work will still need to be done by you. You will still need to have awkward discussions with your co-founders. You will still need to read and digest everything they prepare. You will need to be familiar with the terms of the agreement, so that if a problem starts to surface, you’ll know the best way to deal with it.
Use Robolawyer to put together your shareholders’ agreement
Our fixed price shareholders’ agreement matter is far more than a template. We cover the entire process and make it simple and stress free:
- our term sheet builder helps surface the points relevant to you.
- every document needed to make your terms legally enforceable is included and automatically drafted (we don’t use AI - everything is written by real lawyers).
- we’ll help get the right documents to the right people (maybe there’s a person you want to give shares to, but isn’t a shareholder yet).
- each shareholder will be able to review, comment on and propose amendments to the documents before they’re signed on-platform.
- everything will be assembled automatically into a finalised set of documents that you can rely on as your business grows.
It doesn’t matter how many shareholders are involved, or how many times you need to make changes.
Interested? Talk to us to find out more.
