What is a valuable virtue for business practices?

What are common practices for business partnerships?

• I've been reading a lot about common practices and good ethics to a business partnership. A partner and I have started a business partnership without really consulting these details, but luckily, nothing has really gone awry yet. We're going over the common practices now, but there seems to be a few things that are not really addressed and I would appreciate those who are experienced in partnerships or business working closely with others to give me some feed back. My partner and I tackle projects together most of the time, but there are the occasional individual jobs (more like gigs) that we tackle on our own. To clarify, we are a media company (partnership) that provides services for everything photography and videography related. We sometimes come across gigs that don't require two photographers, so we'll just decide who tackles what. Occasionally, during the jobs, we come across more contacts and potential clients, but we don't know if it's safe to establish a relationship with the contact informing them that we're a team. Basically we don't know if we should be saying, "I can" or "We can" when offering services. We're not sure if that might hurt our chances of getting jobs, especially if the client is only looking for a single photographer. Does anyone think that it's a valid concern? We would prefer to do jobs together, but financially, we can't afford to pass up jobs for team work. When we make contacts while working alone, we establish a relationship with the potential client. Because of that, only one of us becomes the point of contact, whether or not they are aware that we have a partner. Is having a single point of contact a bad idea in a partnership? Lastly, is sharing contacts a necessity for a successful partnership or should partners be allowed some privacy to their contacts? I appreciate any help you can give me on this subject.

• Answer:

  A partnership under the UPA (Uniform Partnership Act) is “an association of two or more persons to carry on as co-owners a business for profit.” A court will use three elements to decide is a partnership status exist. 1. A sharing of profits or losses. 2. A joint partnership of the business. 3. An equal right to participate in the management of the business. None of which stated above is legal advice.