Academy › Build › Create your website
Who you are when someone complains
Write your legal notice with your real name or business name, your EIN or state business license number, and your business address, and publish it with a link from your website's footer.
By Yodai · Published on September 6, 2026 · Updated on October 12, 2026
Your website needs its own legal notice, not the one from the template. Someone lands on your site ready to buy, hesitates for a moment, and before typing a word, looks for a real name behind the business. Not the pretty name you put on the homepage: one with a last name, a tax ID, an address where they can file a complaint if something goes wrong.
If they can't find it, that doesn't always mean they won't reach out. Sometimes they still do, but when the problem gets complicated: a duplicate charge, a service that never arrived, a bank asking to verify who charged the card, the complaint has nowhere to go. It ends up at a consumer protection agency, in a review, or in a card dispute, and none of those places have anyone representing you.
The legal notice exists to answer that question before anyone has to ask: who you are, under what legal name you operate, and how to reach you. These pages are written with your own information, not a template's, and this is the one that needs it most, down to the letter.
What the law requires, plain and simple
The law doesn't ask for a long write-up. It asks for real identification: if you're a sole proprietor, your full legal name as it appears on your tax ID, not your business name, your tax ID number, your address, and your email, plus any other detail that lets people reach you directly, like a phone number.
If you've set up a company, the subject changes: full legal business name, EIN, state registration number, and registered business address. Email and the other contact detail apply in both cases. Describing your activity in a sentence isn't required, but it helps. What the law does require is more information in two cases: if your activity needs prior government authorization, list that authorization and the agency that oversees you; and if you work in a regulated profession, your professional association and membership number, your degree, and the rules governing your profession. And if your site lists prices, it has to clearly state whether they include tax and, if applicable, shipping costs.
The address doesn't have to be your home. It can be your tax address or the address of the office or location where you work, including a coworking space if that's where you work from. What can't happen is having no address at all: a legal notice without an address is just paper.
- Your full legal name, the one on your tax ID, not your website's business name
- Your tax ID number and address
- No registration details: you don't have any because they don't apply
- Full legal business name, exactly as it appears on your registration
- EIN and registered office address
- State registration number
Which one do I choose: If you invoice under your own name and haven't set up a company, use the sole proprietor version: it's the one that matches your actual situation today. The day you set up a company, update the legal notice that same day, not before, because until then it wouldn't be true.
If two of you run the business, a couple or a small team, the legal notice doesn't list everyone's name: it lists the name of whoever is registered as a sole proprietor, or the company's name if you've formed one together. It's that entity, not the people answering WhatsApp messages or taking the photos, that's legally responsible if a complaint comes in.
This is something worth deciding before you write the text, not while you're writing it: which one of you is registered, and with what information.
How to write it, not how to copy it
It doesn't need to sound like a lawyer wrote it. A legal notice is a fact sheet, not a contract: the fewer flourishes, the easier it is to read and the easier it is to update when a detail changes.
One paragraph with your information, one with contact details, and if you want, a line about what you do. Skip the 'in compliance with current regulations' followed by four paragraphs nobody reads: everyone copies that from the same template, and that's exactly what you wanted to avoid.
Publish it with a link in your website's footer, visible on every page. It doesn't need to stand out, nobody visits your site to read the legal notice, but it has to be one click away from anywhere, because that's where people look for it when they need it.
With your information written out this way, the next question is what you ask of the people who reach out to you: what form, which fields are required, and which ones you don't need to ask for yet.
Your legal notice already says who you are. Now it's time to say what information you keep on each customer, one by one: your privacy policy.
- You have your legal notice written with your real name or legal business name, your Social Security number or EIN, and your address
- You know whether the sole proprietor or company version applies to you, and why
- If more than one of you runs the business, you've decided whose information appears
- The text is ready to publish with a link in your website's footer