corporate minutes

You can hire the attorney who helped you form your corporation to handle your corporate minutes; however, minutes are, in the long run, your responsibility as secretary. Your corporate book, provided by your attorney at formation, generally has "form" minutes in it that are suitable for your state. If you formed your corp. yourself and you didn't purchase a book, you can buy corporate supplies (books, which include "form" minutes, seals, etc.) online at legal supply outlets like Blumberg or ASLegal. There are others also; these are just the ones I use with some regularity. I provide their web links. Books with seals tend to run between $50 and $100.

I agree with Nancy, that you should use the attorney who helped you form your corporation to help you with minutes. What better attorney than the one who knows the entire history of your company personally? On a side note, maintaining a corporate book is very important because it helps you maintain a written corporate history, creates a trail of intentions that you can look up, and may be inspected by authorities under certain circumstances (what better way to prove that you're involved in a legitimate business if someone accuses you of otherwise?).

A traditional-styled corporation may use a physical book with a seal for maintaining minutes. But bear in mind that a few companies and non-profit organizations often use electronic means of preserving minutes. Some methods are ad hoc, such as simply saving them in emails, and other methods are more formal, such as saving all minutes in a company server.

Generally you want to do corporate minutes annually (in Illinois) and before any major action. Though many corporations only do corporate minutes on an annual basis, it is more appropriate to create them before the action taken. For example: "Resolved to enter into a lease at 123 Main Street for 5 years at an annual rental of ....." In Illinois, we have a doctrine called piercing the corporate veil which allows personal liability for business debts in some instances - and one of the factors looked at by courts is keeping minutes. Most states have the same doctrine. So run the corporation right to avoid personal liability. My website has an article on Illinois piercing that may be useful.