The complaint
Someone filed. A clock started, and it is not yours.
Where you are
A lawsuit exists. You have a deadline. Every exit is still open, and one of them just got more expensive.
You can still end this here.
How settlement works →Cost so far
You are now at roughly 3× the cost of answering that first letter.
What this is
A complaint is the document that starts a lawsuit. It names the parties, tells a story about what happened, states the legal theories, and says what the plaintiff wants — money, an order making you stop doing something, or both.
It arrives with a summons, which is the court telling you that you have been sued and that you must respond by a date. Getting these documents delivered to you in the legally required way is service of process, and the clock starts when you're served, not when the complaint was filed.
The complaint is a story, not a finding. Nothing in it has been proven, tested, or reviewed by anyone neutral. It can allege things that did not happen. It will describe your conduct in the least generous terms available. Reading it feels like being convicted of something. It is not that.
What it costs you
Small on the map, and larger than the demand letter. You're now paying for a real response on a court's timetable rather than a letter on your own.
Typical response window: commonly 20 to 30 days after service, but this is genuinely jurisdiction-specific — federal court, your state's courts, and the court next door can all differ, and some situations extend it. Get the real number from a lawyer admitted where you were sued. Do not get it from an article, including this one.
What you decide here
Which door you take out of the complaint. There are three, and they are covered in detail on the next page:
Answer — respond to the allegations and litigate.
Motion to dismiss — argue that even if everything alleged were true, it isn't a claim.
Motion to compel arbitration — if a contract sends this dispute somewhere other than court.
You may also have a counterclaim, if the person suing you owes you something. That changes the shape of the negotiation more than founders expect.
Two things worth checking immediately, because they can end the case cheaply: whether the court has jurisdiction over you at all, and whether the statute of limitations has already run.
What you actually do this week
Calendar the deadline, confirmed by your lawyer. Everything else is secondary to not missing it.
Confirm the hold is actually running. If you didn't do it at the demand stage, do it now, and document when you did it.
Notify insurance again, with the filed complaint attached. A filed lawsuit may trigger a defense obligation your carrier owes you — meaning they pay for the lawyer. Founders leave this on the table constantly.
Read the whole thing once, then stop reading it. Note factual errors for your lawyer. Then put it down. Founders lose weeks re-reading a document designed to make them feel terrible.
Check your contracts again for arbitration, venue, and fee-shifting terms.
Work out who else this touches — indemnification from a vendor or customer, a co-defendant, a former employee with their own counsel.
The mistake at this stage
Missing the deadline because the claim is obviously garbage.
This is the only way to lose a case you would have won. Ignore the summons and the other side asks for a default judgment — they win by forfeit, for the amount they demanded, without proving a thing. Setting aside a default is possible in some circumstances and it is far more expensive and far less certain than just responding on time.
The other mistake: responding yourself, on time, in your own words. A complaint requires a technically precise response. Getting it wrong can waive defenses permanently — including good ones you didn't know you had.
You can still end this here
The case is now public. That's the real change: there is a docket with your company's name on it, and a Series B lead's diligence will find it.
Which is also why this exit still matters. Resolving now, before discovery, keeps the record short — a case that appears and resolves reads very differently from one that ran two years. → How settlement works
Where Story fits
You have twenty-odd days, a document written to alarm you, and no lawyer. That combination is where founders make expensive decisions quickly.
The general counsel function here does two things at once. It reads the complaint for what is actually at stake — which claims carry real exposure, which are noise, what the plaintiff is really after — and it puts the right Alliance litigator on it. Right means matched to this claim type and this court, not whoever returns the call first. Cold-shopping for a litigator against someone else's deadline is how founders end up with the wrong one at the wrong rate.
Then the part that usually goes unowned: planning the business around it. What this costs, when it costs it, what it does to your calendar, and what your board hears.
This is general educational information from the attorneys who build Story. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney-client relationship, and it is simplified — litigation procedure varies significantly by jurisdiction and by case. Talk to a licensed attorney about your actual situation.
We're lawyers, remember? Please read this important note:
Story LLP is a law firm, and Story's lawyers built Aegis to deliver better, standard legal services at scale so founders can choose between top-tier specialized lawyers and standardized process automations that replicate those lawyers according to their needs and budget. By definition, a standardized process may not be perfect for you. Please review our Policies page to better understand the difference, as well as how we use AI and how we manage conflicts, privilege, etc.
As a law firm, we must screen clients for conflicts of interest, and we treat all correspondence with clients seeking legal advice as privileged and confidential to the maximum extent possible in consideration of any conflicts. However, Story's law firm or our Attorney Allies do not represent you or your company as your lawyer, do not have an attorney-client relationship with you or your company, and do not provide you with legal advice absent a formal Engagement Letter signed between you and the Story LLP law firm. Please don't confuse the free knowledge we offer on this site with legal advice for you.