The Corporate Filing Office (usually the secretary of state’s office) will usually have a lot of information about the organization and operation of a corporation.

For more legal resources visit:
• http://www.nass.org/
• http://www.keytlaw.com/Links/govrecords.htm

The next source of laws is found in various court decisions. The courts of each state often interpret and determine issues of law regarding corporations. Written decisions from these courts can usually be found in legal reports at a law library and sometimes at a local library.

There are also some good online services to help you find this information. Court decisions are frequently called legal precedents because they are often relied upon as authority by a judge trying to decide similar legal issues. In addition, many libraries have books or treatises prepared by legal experts, which provide helpful summaries of the law.

If you do business in a different state, you will be considered a foreign corporation (which means a corporation from another state) and will be required to register in that state also. If you are doing only minimal business in another state, you probably do not need to do anything. However, if you are doing substantial business in other states, then you will be required to register as a foreign corporation in each additional state.

Each state has its own definition of what “substantial business” means. However, substantial business usually means that you have an office or own real estate in a state or that you have employees in a state or that you have some other form of substantial business dealings or contacts with people in that state. It is important to find out because there can be penalties for doing business in another state when you are not registered as a foreign corporation there.

Most larger companies will be registered as foreign corporations in the different states in which they do business. Many smaller companies, depending on the nature of their business, will only be registered in their home state.