Practice Areas

Startups & Small Business

So you are the founder of a startup. Your singular, intense (some would say mad scientist-esque), all-consuming, and utterly committed focus is on getting The Idea from your brain to the real world.

You are the CEO, and also possibly the CFO, the COO, the billing department, the marketing department, HR, and/or any and every other department.

You’re thinking about a million other things – you may not be thinking about entity structures, contract risk, securities laws, regulatory compliance, what IP you need to protect,  employees, exit options , and many other issues. That’s where a high-quality estate attorney comes into play.

Corporate Transactions

A 2004 McKinsey study showed that a significant proportion of M&A deals fail to achieve projected synergies, and further noted that “most of the shareholder value created is likely to go not to the buyer but to the seller. Indeed, on average, the buyer pays the seller all of the value generated by a merger.”

If you’re the seller, that’s fantastic news; if you’re the buyer, not so much. As a business lawyer, part of my role in the transaction is to help keep you on the right side of these and other sometimes-harsh truths, and to help memorialize that protection in the (extensive) deal documentation.

Estate Planning

While estate plans differ from person to person, fundamentally, it’s about one thing: your wishes should be respected. You spent your whole life working to care for your loved ones – why should your estate plan be given any less thought?

And you probably also want to minimize taxes. (fine! that’s two things).

There’s much more to consider: your own dignity and medical wishes at the end of life, preserving your legacy after death, furthering a treasured philanthropic or charitable cause, caring for your loved ones, ensuring the survival of the family business, and/or any other goal you would like to include in your plan. But regardless of what your goals are, a quality estate planning attorney can help you memorialize them correctly, in the proper documents.