Incorporate Your Company:
Is it necessary to hire a lawyer to incorporate your company? To make sure that all the i's are dotted and t's are crossed, it would be a good idea. If the budget is tight, though and you are careful taking care of the details, the process (at least in NYS) is fairly straight forward. The NYS Department of State has all the information you need on their website to guide you through the process.
This page has the links to let you search the corporation names list and get to the forms necessary to begin the process. If you have a name in mind, but are not ready to incorporate, it may be worthwhile to reserve that name: http://www.dos.state.ny.us/corp/pdfs/dos234.pdf.
Once you are ready to start the incorporation process, review the following document: http://www.dos.state.ny.us/corp/busguide.htm. After you have selected a name, review the filing information on: http://www.dos.state.ny.us/corp/busfile.html. The first document you are going to want to look at is the Corporate Fee Schedule. Be warned that while it doesn't cost much to form a corporation, there are annual costs to incorporating (visit: http://www.irs.gov/ and your state website for various minimum fees which may apply). A corporation is its own taxable entitiy (unlike a partnership or sole proprietorship); it's tax returns can be more complex and thus costly to prepare.
Since the corporation is its own entity, you will have to apply for an identification number (similar to a social security number). IRS form SS-4 and its instructions can be found on the the IRS home page (they usually have a link to this commonly used form on their home page: http://www.irs.gov/ ) otherwise, the pdf can be found here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fss4.pdf?portlet=3.
More to come...